Re: Accidental Use of Oracle Active Data Guard

From: Atkinson, Matthieu <matthieu.atkinson_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 08:30:45 +0100
Message-ID: <CAC0e0h4mBTHXkTY2iCPUm5D0iV+99Lb68eqKhqPgc74-iA-Gsg_at_mail.gmail.com>



Hello All,

"We should have these discussions. We need to help each other become better and do better."

I agree complelty, especially when the tone of the conversation has been so good and respectful so far. And when you add the fact that every two lines people mention it's just their opinion and not law, it's a good thing to talk about it. DBA are often collateral damage to those audits, and even if you could argue they should know and control their systems, putting the topic forward and in the open is going to help.

Thanks, matthieu

On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 12:16 AM, Dimensional DBA < dimensional.dba_at_comcast.net> wrote:

> I believe we kept the conversation civil, even though it is a touchy
> subject.
>
>
>
> I believe it is also fair to call someone out if what they are doing will
> cause potential damage to themselves, their company or others in the
> Community.
>
> I apologize to Mladen if anything I have said was not civil, as sometimes
> my humor is not taken the way I intended. J
>
>
>
> We should have these discussions. We need to help each other become better
> and do better. Anyone can have to go through a license audit and when
> errors are found you feel bad or want to be upset, normally at Oracle
> because they did the audit and want back revenue for the transgression.
> They are a for profit company and faulting them for that would seem to be
> nonsensical.
>
>
>
> If I were to fault Oracle for anything, it would simply be on this
> statement
>
>
>
>
> http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/license-management-services/policy/index.html
>
>
>
> “When a customer licenses Oracle software, it is the customer's
> responsibility to ensure that they are utilizing their licenses in
> accordance with the terms and conditions of the license agreements. “
>
>
>
> We as a customer are expected to be perfect in license management, while
> we know the Oracle SW delivered to us is not perfect because of the amount
> of bugs it contains. I do not think Oracle willfully puts bugs in the SW
> and I believe that they should not believe that our error was a willful one
> versus a simple error, especially on a topic that started this conversation
> on Active Data Guard that many of us opened Support cases on when it first
> came out over this problem and repeated cases over time.
>
>
>
> If you have a good relationship with your Oracle sales folks, they
> normally won’t try to squeeze the blood out of you, although as I mentioned
> earlier we all have encountered the bad eggs on both sides. If we could get
> rid of the bad eggs then our world would be better. 99.5% of the license
> audits I have performed over my career, the findings have been simple
> errors along the way, but there is that 0.5% which were significant willful
> egregious violations. If we can get rid of those in our Community then it
> would be easier to deal with Oracle on the real mistakes.
>
>
>
>
>
> *Matthew Parker*
>
> *Chief Technologist*
>
> *Dimensional DBA*
>
> *425-891-7934 <425-891-7934> (cell)*
>
> *D&B *047931344
>
> *CAGE *7J5S7
>
> *Dimensional.dba_at_comcast.net <Dimensional.dba_at_comcast.net>*
>
> *View Matthew Parker's profile on LinkedIn*
> <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-parker/6/51b/944/>
>
>
>
> *From:* Mladen Gogala [mailto:gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 10, 2016 2:40 PM
> *To:* Seth Miller; Andrew Kerber
> *Cc:* Dimensional DBA; Oracle-L Freelists
>
> *Subject:* Re: Accidental Use of Oracle Active Data Guard
>
>
>
> Frankly, I believe that Oracle audits are outrageous business practice. My
> help has been enlisted on two occasions, before getting employed with my
> current employer, to help limit the damage. The best description of the
> process, that I've heard from my former CIO is the following: "the goal is
> to squeeze as much money as possible, but not to loose customers or create
> a negative publicity". However, the affected company has not purchased a
> single Oracle license between the audit and the time they applied for
> chapter 7. That's how I learned about DB2. I know you will probably not
> believe it, but in DB2 you can range partition your table without paying
> any additional licenses.
> Fortunately, in my current position, I don't deal with licensing and
> audits any more. I can't say that I'm sorry.
> Regards
>
> On 2/10/2016 5:05 PM, Seth Miller wrote:
>
> Andrew,
>
>
>
> To answer your question, Mark Bobak is the list administrator and I have
> no doubt he has been following this thread.
>
>
>
> The fact that it is a touchy subject is mostly due to its ambiguity being
> silent about it will only exacerbate that. At least having a conversation
> about it on this list provides experiences from a large audience instead of
> relying on Oracle spin and FUD. Does that mean you get the occasional
> crackpot recommendations that clearly violate licensing agreements and are
> frankly, below the integrity of this community? Yes, that is going to
> happen and it tends to usually come from the same individuals. But I don't
> think limiting the conversation is the right answer.
>
>
>
> If the Oracle employees that participate in this list don't know better
> (they do) than to respond appropriately on these subjects (they will),
> their contractual agreements with their employer will guarantee it.
> Besides, they're big boys and girls, they can handle it.
>
>
>
> Seth Miller
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 2:51 PM, Andrew Kerber <andrew.kerber_at_gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Who is the moderator for this list? I think we might want to limit this
> topic in the future since it is touchy, and also very prone to
> misinformation. Obviously no information from a mailing list can ever be
> accepted as gospel, but I think anything beyond recommendations for
> companies who might help with an audit defense should be forbidden.
>
> Also, those on the list who are Oracle employees may feel constrained to
> respond with the official Oracle statement, which may or may not be
> accurate.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 2:35 PM, Mladen Gogala <gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> This is my personal opinion. I am not using my Commvault email address,
> and everything I write on this group is my personal opinion and has nothing
> to do with my employer. Commvault doesn't deal with the client Oracle
> licenses.
> As I have said, I have seen the cases when people got away with it., when
> I was a DBA.
>
>
>
> On 2/10/2016 2:51 PM, Seth Miller wrote:
>
> Wow. It's pretty amazing that you would post something like this in a
> public forum and continue to defend it.
>
>
>
> Does Commvault actually tell its customers that this is an acceptable form
> of use or is this just your personal opinion?
>
>
>
>
>
> Seth Miller
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 1:32 PM, Mladen Gogala <gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> The question is about the 30 days. Here is the excerpt:
>
> http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/olsa-gr-v020703-070544.pdf
>
> *Trial Programs You may order trial programs, or Oracle may include
> additional programs with your order which you may use for trial,
> nonproduction purposes only. You have 30 days from the delivery date to
> evaluate these programs. If you decide to use any of these programs after
> the 30 day trial period, you must obtain a license for each program from
> Oracle. If you decide not to obtain a license for any program after the 30
> day trial period, you will cease using and will delete the applicable
> programs from your computer systems. Programs licensed for trial purposes
> are provided “as is” and Oracle does not provide technical support or offer
> any warranties for these programs.*
>
> Essentially, I am in compliance with the license, as long as my DB is less
> than 30 days old. Technically, if I drop the database and create a new
> copy, I am starting a new 30 days trial. You will have to prove that this
> is not so. As you yourself have said, you shouldn't be complying with
> everything that auditors ask for. I have seen people getting away with the
> trials. And, for the record, license audits did not create too many friends
> to Oracle Corp.
> Personally, I advise everybody to take a look at DB2 for Linux. Excellent
> database, 3 times cheaper than Oracle and works just as well for majority
> of purposes. One of the ways of coping with exorbitantly expensive Oracle
> licenses is not using them, whenever possible. That might even motivate
> Oracle Corp. to reconsider their licensing policy.
>
>
>
> On 2/10/2016 1:28 PM, Dimensional DBA wrote:
>
> Sorry, I had to get on the road for a bit. I asked you to read the
> licensing agreements, so let me help you here
>
>
>
> http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/databaselicensing-070584.pdf
>
>
>
> http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/licenses/standard-license-152015.html
>
>
>
> “Subject to the full terms of the OTN License Agreement, this limited
> license allows the user to develop applications using the licensed products
> as long as such applications have not been used for any data processing,
> business, commercial, or production purposes.”
>
>
>
> I am not a lawyer and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night J,
> but I can read plain English and I have negotiated enough contracts over
> the last 23 years with multiple Chief Legal Counsels to understand that
> copying a database from prod to development by any means so that you can
> continue development on that app that is being used in prod is a license
> violation by that sentence above.
>
>
>
> Then you have the next statement in the licensing agreement
>
>
>
> “Test Environment: All programs used in a test environment must be
> licensed under an OMA, OLSA, or other appropriate Oracle (or Oracle
> authorized reseller) license agreement”.
>
>
>
> You can claim that you are only doing development on something but if you
> do not have a test and dev environment separate then the licensing folks
> will consider it to be test also and it would be a license violation if the
> app hadn’t made it to production yet. Also you must be very careful here
> relative that no portion of the app (think reusable libraries) is being
> used in your production environments or your app from a services
> perspective is not touching other apps that are in production use. Just for
> the sake of lawyers think in terms of are you using the a single DNS/AD
> server for prod and development that under a total application perspective
> could be considered the app is in prod.
>
>
>
> Then there are support agreements and your base license MSA and their
> licensing sentences that we will skip for now.
>
>
>
> I have seen too much in this space. This is why when I worked at Amazon
> and a variety of other customers that before we downloaded Oracle software
> to test with to see how it worked and if we wanted to buy it, we would go
> through legal counsel to negotiate a contract with Oracle on the use of
> their software for a specific limited period of time without charge because
> in most cases besides using canned benchmarks we wanted to actually
> develop/test with the real production applications to test the features.
> Once you are a customer of Oracle or really any software vendor there are
> many places for you to trip over licensing issues and in most cases that
> trip is because of us technical people doing something we shouldn’t.
>
>
>
> *Matthew Parker*
>
> *Chief Technologist*
>
> *Dimensional DBA*
>
> *425-891-7934 <425-891-7934> (cell)*
>
> *D&B *047931344
>
> *CAGE *7J5S7
>
> *Dimensional.dba_at_comcast.net <Dimensional.dba_at_comcast.net>*
>
> *View Matthew Parker's profile on LinkedIn*
> <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-parker/6/51b/944/>
>
>
>
> *From:* Malden Gogala [mailto:gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com
> <gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com>]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 10, 2016 5:45 AM
> *To:* Dimensional DBA
> *Cc:* oracle-l_at_freelists.org
> *Subject:* Re: Accidental Use of Oracle Active Data Guard
>
>
>
> Is anything I said inaccurate?
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
> On Feb 10, 2016, at 8:35 AM, Dimensional DBA <dimensional.dba_at_comcast.net>
> wrote:
>
> It is recommendations like this, trying to skirt Oracle licensing that
> will cause a license audit for a company and makes it harder for companies
> who make simple mistakes versus willful mistakes to deal with Oracle LMS.
>
>
>
> You really should read the Oracle licensing document for software
> downloads from OTN/Oracle.com <http://oracle.com> and read the oracle
> licensing documents relative to customers who own licenses versus simply
> being the single developer in the wild downloading software to learn or do
> development on while not owning any licenses.
>
>
>
> Your activities as an individual in a company and using any company
> equipment for these activities puts the company at risk and makes life
> worse for us in the Oracle Community.
>
>
>
>
>
> *Matthew Parker*
>
> *Chief Technologist*
>
> *Dimensional DBA*
>
> *425-891-7934 <425-891-7934> (cell)*
>
> *D&B *047931344
>
> *CAGE *7J5S7
>
> *Dimensional.dba_at_comcast.net <Dimensional.dba_at_comcast.net>*
>
> *View Matthew Parker's profile on LinkedIn*
> <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-parker/6/51b/944/>
>
>
>
> *From:* oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [
> mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org>] *On
> Behalf Of *Mladen Gogala
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 10, 2016 5:02 AM
> *To:* oracle-l_at_freelists.org
> *Subject:* Re: Accidental Use of Oracle Active Data Guard
>
>
>
> On 02/10/2016 07:42 AM, John Hallas wrote:
>
> How true that is.
>
> It is often very difficult to work out what we have got and who controls
> the licenses.
>
>
>
> The best site as regards license management (and many other things) I
> worked at had a very simple rule – if a server was not listed on a central
> spreadsheet which was managed by Purchasing then you could not install any
> Oracle software on there.
>
> It did not matter how much anybody shouted or how important the project
> was – that was the rule.
>
>
>
> John
>
> www.jhdba.wordpress.com
>
>
>
> *From:* kathy duret [mailto:katpopins21_at_yahoo.com <katpopins21_at_yahoo.com>]
>
>
>
> Where I have seen it fall down is that management doesn't always involve
> and/or communicate what is licensed effectively to staff.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Wm Morrison Supermarkets Plc is registered in England with number 358949.
> The registered office of the company is situated at Gain Lane, Bradford,
> West Yorkshire BD3 7DL. This email and any attachments are intended for the
> addressee(s) only and may be confidential.
>
> If you are not the intended recipient, please inform the sender by
> replying to the email that you have received in error and then destroy the
> email.
> If you are not the intended recipient, you must not use, disclose, copy or
> rely on the email or its attachments in any way.
>
> This email does not constitute a contract in writing for the purposes of
> the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989.
>
> Our Standard Terms and Conditions of Purchase, as may be amended from time
> to time, apply to any contract that we enter into. The current version of
> our Standard Terms and Conditions of Purchase is available at:
> http://www.morrisons.co.uk/gscop
>
> Although we have taken steps to ensure the email and its attachments are
> virus-free, we cannot guarantee this or accept any responsibility,
> and it is the responsibility of recipients to carry out their own virus
> checks.
> ______________________________________________________________________
>
>
> Another good trick to remember is that you have the right to use database
> 30 days for free, as a trial license. Consequently, if you keep re-creating
> your development database every 30 days, using some form of "duplicate
> database", you don't have to pay for the license. That is where SAN
> snapshot technology pays off.
>
>
> --
>
> Mladen Gogala
>
> Oracle DBA
>
> http://mgogala.freehostia.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Andrew W. Kerber
>
> 'If at first you dont succeed, dont take up skydiving.'
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> --
>
> Mladen Gogala
>
> Oracle Consultant
>
> http://mgogala.freehostia.com
>
>
>
> DISCLAIMER: I am solely responsible for any opinion expressed in this email
>
>

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
Received on Thu Feb 11 2016 - 08:30:45 CET

Original text of this message