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

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

#41

Post by Johnny555 » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 6:13 PM UTC

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…

About 10 years ago, my then-employer had an Oracle audit and they were found to owe over $500,000 in licensing fees (the initial cost was much higher but they negotiated it down). They were blatantly violating their agreement by owning a single socket license and using Oracle on a half dozen large production servers and a bunch of dev servers. The DBA that ran the licensing script said "You know we're not in compliance right?" and the company execs said "No worries, we'll negotiate a good deal".

When I started, I asked about licensing while setting up a new production server and the CTO admitted they were under licensed and were planning to true up licenses next quarter, but over a year went by and they never did. I suggested that they work on porting to Postgres or MySQL/MariaDB and get off Oracle (or at least consolidate into fewer servers to reduce the socket count), but they never had the time to do that.

The company went out of business shortly after the bill from Oracle came due (not sure if Oracle ever got any money). I'd already left by then since I saw the writing on the wall -- as soon as they stopped providing snacks in the break room and the coffee switched from Peets to Folgers, I knew they were running out of money.

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

#42

Post by exhilaration » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 6:14 PM UTC

Takennickname wrote: post #30

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."

Man that's terrifying. Every business with software engineers needs make sure that the the Oracle, MySQL, Java.com, and Virtual Box domains are blocked on their network.

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

#43

Post by konschubert » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 6:22 PM UTC

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…

That’s why it’s so important that competition is possible in a market. Such that legacy players with inefficient legacy technologies can be driven out of the market.

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

#44

Post by zaphar » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 6:22 PM UTC

whiterknight wrote: post #40

zaphar wrote: post #17

Look, if you are already in business with Oracle then you have my condolences. But if you aren't in business with them then there is absolutely no world where you should ever under any circumstances consider getting into business with them. Nothing their database does can't be done with a different database. Even paying for a proprietary database can be done with a different party than Oracle. Do not, I repeat, do no…

How is there such a big disconnect between HN opinion on Oracle and business use? Is it maybe the least bad of all the bad options? Does it cover some edge cases which the obvious FOSS solutions don’t?

I honestly don't know. I don't know how they stay in business since every developer I've ever met had a bordering on irrational hatred of them.

The only people I've met who like them were all Oracle consultants of some sort and not what I would call developers. When I've been forced to use an Oracle database it was because the company had a contract with Oracle and didn't want to allow any other database to be used. The decision was always several levels above my paygrade. I no longer accept positions at the kind of place that will do business with Oracle. It tends to signal that leadership of that place has some serious problems and too much money to realize they have those problems.

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

#45

Post by lazide » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 6:23 PM UTC

__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.

Oh man, in theory SQL is standard - in practice, you’ll need to rewrite (or do major surgery) on nearly everything that interacts with your Oracle instance. Unless you’ve been incredibly careful, which is unlikely.

And chances are, you started using Oracle because of some enterprise software somewhere for which you don’t even have the source - so good luck.

And don’t forget, Oracle will encourage you to use all their Oracle specific stuff everywhere in their documentation. It’s a giant, idiosyncratic mess.

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

#46

Post by kragen » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 6:24 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #21

kragen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

pretty sure you can get your openjdk lts updates from debian

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

#47

Post by kragen » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 6:24 PM UTC

pantulis wrote: post #27

kragen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

i'm glad you're enjoying it! i found it very educational

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

#48

Post by jabroni_salad » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 6:25 PM UTC

BenoitP wrote: post #4

> Earlier last year, it made changes to the Oracle Java SE subscription model, basing it on a per-employee metric many said would increase costs for users. Would running Java under Corretto 21 change this?

I recently helped a factory change their timecard system because of this. They wanted a license for every employee and contractor who is capable of using any computer. Not just for the timepunch devices. Not just for the employees who use the timepunch devices.

I wasn't involved in the decision but it's my understanding that they did not even try to engage their vendor. They got legal threats from Oracle and put in a different solution on the same day. If you develop for java make sure your install process doesnt have something like "step 1: install java" cuz guess what they're going to download.

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

#49

Post by soperj » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 6:26 PM UTC

aaronharnly wrote: post #3

soperj wrote: post #2

Oracle's favourite phrase seems to be "You're out of compliance", and their only solution is for you to pay more.

And if they can’t say that (ie when it’s not true), they will intimate that you might be out of compliance, and hope you’re worried enough to just pay more anyway.

They seem to say it regardless of whether it's true or not.

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

#50

Post by __loam » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 6:26 PM UTC

mickeyp wrote: post #28

__loam wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I mean, I get it. Amazon spent years getting off of oracle. I'm just saying the only reason to be on oracle now is because migration is expensive. It says a lot that it's not a competitive product for new applications, and is in fact a liability.