Organizations that do not consider themselves Oracle customers, but who use Java, can expect a call from the Big Red in the next three to nine months, according to a software licensing specialist.
House of Brick, which has spent years advising clients on how to manage their commercial arrangements with Oracle, said it had noticed an uptick in organizations seeking advice after being contacted by the tech giant about their Java use.
"Even if you are not an Oracle customer, they are tracking product downloads and matching the IP addresses to your organization. Oracle has deployed a whole team of people in India that are contacting organizations worldwide with claims of non-compliant Java SE usage," the company said in a blog, referring to the runtime environment.
While most Oracle and Java users have become aware of the changes, those who have never dealt with Oracle for their applications, database or middleware software might be new to the arrangement.
"They don't have a relationship with Oracle. But Oracle has tracked Java SE downloads to their company. And then Oracle approached them saying 'We see that you've been downloading our Java SE product, it requires a licence.' This might be an email coming from a person that has an audit or similar title in their signature," said Nathan Biggs, House of Brick CEO.
For example, Oracle is likely to ask for the installation date and ask whether the customer also deploys on VMware.
But Oracle will be leading towards an "offer" to overlook earlier unlicensed software if they agree to sign up to the new subscription model, Biggs said.
Organizations should be careful before they take up the offer, he said. Users with legacy Oracle agreements face more than 100 percent — even 1,000 percent — cost increases when moving to the new terms. Bills going from tens of thousands of dollars to more than a million have been confirmed by multiple licensing specialists.
He said Oracle is entitled to ask for backdated payments for people already using Java since the paid-for deal was announced. But whether they should be forced to adopted the 2023 per employee arrangement is a moot point.
To start with, Oracle will limit the back-payment to three years. But it will also try to charge users under the Universal pricing arrangement introduced in January 2023.
"This is absurd because the universal pricing has only been around for a year. We always then push back on Oracle," he said.
Remember that Microsoft offers a nicely packaged version of openjdk for download
So do Eclipse, IBM, Amazon, Azul, Liberica, etc. There is really no reason to download any JDK version from the OTN ever.
Also if your organisation still relies on JDK 8 then using a non-Oracle openjdk version is your only option if you don't want to give Oracle money.
Just use asdf or the alternative that works on windows. You can specify all your languages in the file even for maven or gradle or any thing else as well. No more managing installs.
Or on Linux systems as well. Another reason why Open Source / Libre Software is not only important, but essential to keep the freedom of users intact. There is no tracking, no artificial limitation from Oracle and no cost involved as well.
The Java implementation from Oracle needs to die. Everyone should switch to openjdk or stop using Java.
Company asks me if I use Oracle Java. The problem is, how would I know I'm 100% clean?
If every library dev start doing this we need a horrible amount of extra work to make sure the system is clean...