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.
One rich company trying to claim money off the other rich companies using its software. The ROI on enforcing these will come from only those that really should have afforded to pay and if they can’t, shouldn’t have built on the framework. Let them duke it out. I have zero empathy for either side.
The hopeful other side is with a “budget” for the license, a company can consider using that to weigh up open source contributions and expertise. Allowing those projects to have experts who have income. Even if it’s only a few companies that then hire for that role of porting over, and contributing back to include needed features, more of that helps everyone.
The same happens in security, there used to be no budget for it, it was a cost centre. But then insurance providers wouldn’t provide cyber insurance without meeting minimum standards (after they lost billions) and now companies suddenly have a budget. Security is thriving.
When companies value something, because they need to weigh opportunity cost, they’ll find money.