Andrew, I couldn't agree more. Oracle license audits are a very touchy
subjects and feelings will run high. The information is essentially
political, because nobody wants to risk the screaming to become too
loud. I would limit this topic in the future.
Again, I am speaking only for myself and using my private email address,
to remove any doubt.
On 2/10/2016 3:51 PM, Andrew Kerber 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@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:gogala.mladen@xxxxxxxxx>> 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@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:gogala.mladen@xxxxxxxxx>> 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 <tel:425-891-7934> (cell)*
*D&B *047931344**
*CAGE *7J5S7**
*Dimensional.dba@xxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:Dimensional.dba@xxxxxxxxxxx>*
*View Matthew Parker's profile on LinkedIn*
<http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-parker/6/51b/944/>
*From:*Malden Gogala [mailto:gogala.mladen@xxxxxxxxx]
*Sent:* Wednesday, February 10, 2016 5:45 AM
*To:* Dimensional DBA
*Cc:* oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*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@xxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:dimensional.dba@xxxxxxxxxxx>> 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 <tel:425-891-7934> (cell)*
*D&B *047931344
*CAGE *7J5S7
*Dimensional.dba@xxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:Dimensional.dba@xxxxxxxxxxx>*
*View Matthew Parker's profile on LinkedIn*
<http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-parker/6/51b/944/>
*From:*oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of
*Mladen Gogala
*Sent:* Wednesday, February 10, 2016 5:02 AM
*To:* oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*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 <http://www.jhdba.wordpress.com>
*From:*kathy duret [mailto:katpopins21@xxxxxxxxx]
Where I have seen it fall down is that management
doesn't always involve and/or communicate what is
licensed effectively to staff.
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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.'
