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'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

theregister.com

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Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#21

Post by layer8 »

kragen wrote: post #13
kevinherron wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, all of this Oracle Java licensing drama only applies if you're using the Oracle JDK. The vast majority of people can just use a JDK from any of the other vendors and tell Oracle to pound sand. Even if you do need paid support, you should pay Azul instead of Oracle, just out of principle.

also they can use the openjdk from oracle

Oracle doesn’t provide LTS updates. Each Oracle OpenJDK version is only supported for six months and doesn’t receive any further updates afterwards.

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#22

Post by politelemon »

mayoff wrote: post #6

A few years ago, my then-employer (a smallish company, < 150 employees) had to deal with an Oracle compliance audit. I was shocked at the time to learn that there are companies (like Palisade Compliance mentioned in this article) that specialize in Oracle license compliance. We made it through just fine (in fact I believe we managed to get a small refund!), but having been through that (though not in any way directly…

> that specialize in Oracle license compliance

Oh but it gets better. Many of them are ex oracle employees. It's a huge racket that exists for itself.

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#23

Post by SteveNuts »

__loam wrote: post #16
icedchai wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you're using an Oracle database, you are probably using proprietary Oracle features, SQL syntax, client libraries, etc. The first chance you get might be a while. I once worked on a project porting an app from Oracle to another commercial DB. When Oracle is deeply embedded in your applications, it's easier said than done.

It's a good thing there aren't numerous open source alternative databases that can be hosted by numerous other services then.

These companies are also using EBS as their ERP, which you most certainly cannot swap out the underlying database.

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#24

Post by hudsonjr »

The "new contract" vs old sounds like internal problems where I work.

We'll have a contract signed and everything is OK for a couple years. Then someone goes ham on inventing an approval matrix and other policy/rules to keep the offshored workers from making mistakes, and we have problems. Vendors getting paid late because of policy.

Even if we provide the contract we'll get arguments that it can't be so because it says something different in their database. It's that way in their DB, because if unknown, they default to whatever is best for our company.

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#25

Post by neilv »

How frequent are these Oracle audits?

My first thought was that you'd want to have ongoing diligence to be compliant. (Just like you don't want to have a delinquent debt with a loan shark who relishes penalties.)

But my second thought was that, if the audits are infrequent, some companies might intentionally violate the licenses. Or not want to know nor have a paper trail if there are inadvertent violations. (Both companies and individuals tend to like to kick problems down the road. Due to short-term thinking by businesses, and individuals who might be gone before chickens come home to roost.)

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#26

Post by winrid »

politelemon wrote: post #22
mayoff wrote: post #6

A few years ago, my then-employer (a smallish company, < 150 employees) had to deal with an Oracle compliance audit. I was shocked at the time to learn that there are companies (like Palisade Compliance mentioned in this article) that specialize in Oracle license compliance. We made it through just fine (in fact I believe we managed to get a small refund!), but having been through that (though not in any way directly…

> that specialize in Oracle license compliance Oh but it gets better. Many of them are ex oracle employees. It's a huge racket that exists for itself.

the revolving door of oracle consultants? :)

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#27

Post by pantulis »

kragen wrote: post #12
krylon wrote: post #5

"a specialist advisory company helping clients deal with Oracle licenses" I would (naively, I know) imagine that if you need to hire a third party to help you sort out your licenses with a vendor, you would do whatever it takes to get rid of that vendor. It's almost as if Oracle wants their customers to ditch them the first chance they get.

oracle products aren't really products you can ditch in most cases. generally what it takes to get rid of them is to go out of business and be replaced by a business that isn't an oracle customer. i had a very interesting thread about that dynamic on here with pamar three weeks ago, which will be very interesting reading for anyone who is wondering why people don't ditch oracle https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39…

Thanks for pointing that thread out!

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#28

Post by mickeyp »

__loam wrote: post #16
icedchai wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you're using an Oracle database, you are probably using proprietary Oracle features, SQL syntax, client libraries, etc. The first chance you get might be a while. I once worked on a project porting an app from Oracle to another commercial DB. When Oracle is deeply embedded in your applications, it's easier said than done.

It's a good thing there aren't numerous open source alternative databases that can be hosted by numerous other services then.

This is a great way to tell everyone you've never had to do this type of migration.

Oracle's got a lot of nasty things going for it, for sure. But there's a reason people still use it: part of it is vendor lock-in, of course; the other is that the database is actually really nice.

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#29

Post by falcor84 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #20
krylon wrote: post #5

"a specialist advisory company helping clients deal with Oracle licenses" I would (naively, I know) imagine that if you need to hire a third party to help you sort out your licenses with a vendor, you would do whatever it takes to get rid of that vendor. It's almost as if Oracle wants their customers to ditch them the first chance they get.

Even Amazon had a hard time migrating. https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/amazon-databas... https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/migration-complete-amazons-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21258127 (Edit: 2019)

Do you happen to know when that took place? I can't seem to find any dates on that page

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#30

Post by Takennickname »

Got an email from oracle recently that said (paraphrased):

"We saw downloads for virtual box from your IP address but no licenses for your organization. Please let us know when is a suitable time to meet to explain the benefits of being licensed correctly."

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