Well shoot. After checking the docs... I'm going to go on Hemant's and
Mladen's side and say that Jared, Andrew, Seth and Matthew might all
have it wrong. (WTF?!)
To be fair, my understanding has always been in line with them until
just now. I'm familiar with the text Andrew quoted from the 11.2
licensing guide.
He didn't give a link - so here it is:
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
"Oracle Clusterware provides cluster membership and high availability
monitoring and failover. Oracle Clusterware may be used to protect any
application (restarting or failing over the application in the event of
a failure) on any server, free of charge. Oracle will provide support
for Clusterware only if the server is running an Oracle product, which
may include Oracle Linux or Oracle Solaris, that is also under Oracle
support."
So it's possible that this has actually been quietly changed between 11g
and 12c - perhaps starting in 12c, clusterware is free without
restriction or encumbrance for any use - and you just need to pay for
something (e.g. Oracle Linux) if you want support.
But Naga, please don't take this email thread as authoritative. Double
check with someone at Oracle. I think based on the 12c licensing doc
they should be able to verify that you're free to use clusterware.
-Jeremy
On Wed, 20 Jul 2016 22:50:04 -0700 "Dimensional DBA" wrote:
I never claimed it wasn’t free. I stated you can’t use it for
whatever you please which was your implication of it being FREE, that
you must follow the legal documents. It is better to say that cluster
ware is free but carries with it legal encumbrances that make it not
so free.
