Re: Oracle License

> On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 6:42 AM, Jeremy Schneider wrote:
> > I'm familiar with the text Andrew quoted from the 11.2
> > licensing guide.
> > http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18248_01/doc/license.112/e10594/editions.htm#DBLIC2101
> >
> > But I just went hunting for the same text in the 12c licensing
> > guide... and it seems that they removed that paragraph and replaced
> > it with a new one:
> > https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/DBLIC/editions.htm#BABHIAAF

On Thu, 21 Jul 2016 08:49:27 -0500 Chris Taylor wrote:
> [if] the 2 documents are
> in CONFLICT in regard to SCOPE of the rights granted,

FWIW, I didn't see them as conflicting - I just figured the 11g licensing guide appled to version 11 and the 12c guide applied to version 12.

Personally though, if I owned a company, there's no way I'd deploy oracle clusterware in production based on this flimsy thinking. When buying software from Oracle, what matters is the contract that they sign with me - which should explicitly reference documents, definitions, etc - and should explicitly grant rights to me. With open source software, I am explicitly granted rights through licenses like the GPL or BSD or what-have-you, which are always distributed as part of the software package itself.

This Oracle licensing doc is not part of the clusterware software package that's distributed. Matthew is dead right when he highlights the importance of how you download the software. If you download from OTN, then you *cannot* use it for production. You need to download from eDelivery or MOS for that.

Some corp lawyers already have issues with open source licenses... at a previous employer, I once worked together with my VP to try and educate our corp lawyer about risks and mechanics of GPL licenses and reasons why they were ok for our particular use case. The lawyers have valid concerns and good questions that techies don't always think to ask.

If your company has any oracle products whatsoever, then you might have an easier go with deploying clusterware in the "free" use case - you have access to edelivery and you have a contract in place that references some version of the licensing doc. If you have no relationship with Oracle whatsoever, then you should probably do a little research and possibly talk to a lawyer. Or just go talk to someone at Oracle sales; maybe they'll just give it to you. I haven't tried!

Just some thoughts... and I'll probably retract all of this tomorrow :)

-Jeremy

-- 
http://about.me/jeremy_schneider


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