Java users urged to dump Oracle for open source as licensing shakedown looms

Shift to per employee licensing set to cost customers millions

Oracle is ramping up software audits to catch Java license dodgers – and analysts say to look elsewhere.

Oracle’s Java subscribers have been urged to draw up their escape plans as the company looks to squeeze end-of-financial-year revenues from customers, led by the threat of comprehensive software audits.

It comes two years after Oracle altered the licensing terms for the Java standard edition (SE) subscription from a per-user model based on server processors and cloud instances, to a per-employee model – a shift described as “sheer greed” by the MD of one organisation affected.

An SME with 250 employees could see its licensing costs increase 14-times, from $3,000 (£2,435) a year to $45,000 (£26,500).

When it introduced the Universal subscription model, Oracle claimed users on the existing licensing plan could stick with it – but its salespeople were keen to sell IT departments on the idea that the new model would be more straightforward and less bureaucratic to administer.

Now, warn analysts, the company is turning the screws on any organisation tempted by the new licensing model, with Oracle software auditing teams across the world being beefed-up as the company attempts to pull in every last penny it can before the close of its financial year at the end of May.

The company’s approach to software licensing doesn’t just look to crowbar extra fees (and fines) from organisations for infractions of the licensing agreement – whether deliberate or, more typically, inadvertent – but to use it as a negotiating tool to provide the leverage to get other software deals over the line.

Scott Sellers, CEO of Java specialist Azul, told The Register that Oracle has been expanding its Java-focused audit teams since the change in licensing terms.

He said Oracle is "putting specific Java sales teams in country, and then identifying those companies that appear to be downloading [Java tools from Oracle]”.

That provides them with the leverage to demand an audit of the organisations identified and the rest, as they say, is money.

Sellers suggested that, instead, because Java is open source, companies can and should migrate to more competitive alternatives; first by using tools to identify the extent of usage and then putting in place a migration strategy.

Even if the organisation ultimately chooses not to migrate, it provides the ultimate leverage against Oracle – the ability to walk away.