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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> Oracle Licensing Mess
Someone posted the original on this topic, which I sort of stayed away from, I
too often on those types of topics put my foot into the mouth. Anyway, the
following came across the wires this morning from Information Week. Some of you
may be interested, me I'm off to do some more with PostGres & MySql!!
Dick Goulet
Oracle just can't get away from pricing controversies. The software vendor is reportedly seeking extra license fees from customers in a dispute over just what constitutes a "user" in a batched multiplex computing environment. The consulting firm Meta Group, saying it has received a "flurry of calls (from) angry Oracle customers," is urging customers to refuse to pay the fees.
Industry observers say Oracle is aggressively enforcing its software license contracts. "I hear Oracle is being mean to its customers," Wells Fargo Securities analyst Rob Tholemeier said last week before Oracle reported its third-quarter results. "They are reviewing database agreements, being very tough, and trying to get more dollars out of them." Oracle CFO Jeff Henley, when asked about the issue during a conference call with Wall Street analysts, said the company has an "ongoing license-compliance program," but that there's no new enforcement initiative under way.
Multiplexing involves a shared pool of connections to a back-end database that makes it difficult to determine the actual number of users accessing the database. Under such circumstances, companies generally purchase database licenses on a per-CPU model or pay for all users at the front of the system. But Oracle, according to Meta Group, is trying to expand the definition of multiplexing to include batch feeds from non-Oracle applications into Oracle databases, and that user licenses must be purchased for all users of those source systems. One Meta Group client was told that it would have to pay $2.2 million in additional license fees to remain in compliance.
"It appears pretty clear to us that they have redefined what multiplexing is to an absurd degree," says Meta Group analyst Charlie Garry. Oracle says this definition has always been its policy. But Meta Group questions Oracle's move on both legal and ethical grounds. - Rick Whiting
More on Oracle
Oracle 3Q Earnings Drop
http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eGTT0BdFGA0V20BaCt0Ae
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INET: dgoulet_at_vicr.com
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