Re: Licencing terms for students?

> Hi all,
>
>
> I would like to know under what conditions that I
> (a 4th year undergraduate student at Trinity College
> Dublin, Ireland) student may (or may not) use Oracle
> database products for a degree project?
>
>
> The intended use is for a project which will not
> continue past June 2010. The project will not be
> deployed to the public nor commercially and no fees
> of any sort will be charged to anyone who does use
> it - use will be restricted to fellow students (testing)
> and staff (grading).
>
>
> I would be grateful if anyone could clarify Oracle's
> position on such use of its database products.
>
>
> TIA and rgs.
>
>

the first thing I'd do is check that your University doesn't already have an Oracle license you can use. Many of the Universities I've done work at have pretty generous licensing terms with Oracle.

The second thing I'd do is contact Oracle. Their licensing basically says you have to have a license if you plan to use what you develop in a commercial or production situation. While the 'commercial' is fairly easy to define, 'production' is a bit more cryptic. I suspect if you explain your requirements, emphasize its a student research project and not being used as part of the University's 'core business', they will probably say your covered by the provisions for developers and allow you to use it without licensing fees. Possibly offer them copies of your thesis or any papers you get published. Maybe even try sweetening the pot by saying your qiling to acknowledge Oracle in your thesis/publications or possibly agree to a blurb along the lines "This research was made possible through the generous contributions of Oracle blah blah ...

One thing I have learnt when ealing with Oracle is don't accept the first ruling/decision you get if its not satisfactory. Contact them again the next day and hope you get a different sales person. My experience has been that doing this can dramatically reduce licensing costs. Tjere is some 'rubber' in their costings and enough vague definitions that once you get a sympathetic sales rep, it can make a big difference.

When we moved to RAC, the initial quote for licensing was a bit of a shock. After I'd digested things for a week or so and called back again, I got a different person. He wa a lot more on the ball and identified quite a few Oracle components we were licensing that either we were not really using or would not be necessary with a RAC environment. Once we recieved credits for all of that, the increase in cost was minimal. Things improved even more when they found out IBM was really trying to sell to us.

Tim

.

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au