Oracle Licensing and Standard Technical Support Features
I think many software developers and entrepreneurs will be interested in some features of the licensing policy and technical support of Oracle.
Starting development of your applications on Oracle is very simple, and Oracle will not take money for it. The interesting part will begin later, when the project will need to be legalized.
Each time you purchase Oracle licenses, both parties sign a document called the “Order Form,” which contains a listing of the licenses, their effective date, and cost.
For all its products and technical support, Oracle requires 100% prepayment. An exception to this rule can only be received by budget organizations by asking for it in an official letter.
When purchasing software products, standard technical support for them for a period of 1 year is immediately sold without fail.
The essence of standard technical support (hereinafter - STP) is that the person who bought it has the right to upgrade to the next version of the software for free, and also gets access to support.oracle.com, where you can register your bug reports, read solutions from others, download patches .
Of course, under the STP program, Oracle solves only massive problems. If you want to get the attention of Oracle engineers specifically for your configuration, then you need to buy extended technical support for standard TP (the Oracle manager will figure out how many hours and what they will need to spend, multiply by 3.14, etc.). Of course, 100% prepayment is required, and at the end of the contract unspent funds are not returned and are not transferred to the next period of extended support.
The cost of STP for the 1st year is 22% of the cost of licenses specified in the Order Form. Each subsequent year, the cost of STP increases by 3% of its value (not from the cost of licenses, but by 3% from its previous value).
Oracle calls this premium "inflation rate." In the license agreement [ 1] Oracle promises not to increase the cost of standard tech support by more than 4% per year (Clause H on page 4).
You can refuse standard technical support from the second year onwards and continue to legally use the purchased products, but there are two nuances:
1. If you ever need an STP later, then before you can buy it, Oracle will require you to pay a fine - 1.5 times more than a standard TP would cost for a missed period.
It is clear that in this way Oracle is insured against the options “every 3 years I bought STP for a period of 1 year and updated the software version”. In my opinion, a certain amount for the renewal of TP can be claimed, but the presence of a raising coefficient goes completely beyond the bounds of good. Not only that, in fact, Oracle receives payment for an unproven service (this is illegal in Russia), it’s also 1.5 times more.
2. Oracle divides its software products into “subset of licenses” - groups of licenses for their intended purpose (Database, Middleware, Applications, etc.), and it does not matter that they are purchased at different times for different Order Forms.
For example, all Oracle Database you purchased will be assigned to one “set of licenses”, and WebLogic Server will fall into another. For more details, which software is included in which “bundle”, see Oracle Software Technical Support Policies [ 2 ].
Oracle requires that the User all licenses from one “bundle” be at the same level of standard technical support. There are two levels - “there is STP” and “there is no STP”.
Now suppose you have a long-bought Database Standard, on which you have some kind of auxiliary system running, and you did not need an STP on it. Over time, you needed to buy Database Enterprise for the business-critical task. So you got a penalty for the missed STP period for DB Standard.
Oracle offers a wonderful way out of this situation - to abandon the "extra" licenses for which you do not want to pay a penalty for the missed STP period by writing the so-called Termination Letter.
Here, some will think about whether it is possible to transfer DB Standard to a friendly legal entity before purchasing a DBE. Without delving into it, I’ll note that sharing Oracle with different “own” legal entities is also not easy, for example, you can’t let users from another legal entity to DB if it is licensed under NUP and not on CPU.
One of the positive aspects of cooperation with Oracle is that if you buy licenses for millions of dollars, you have a chance to get a big discount, even more than 50% of the GPL (standard price list) [ 3 ]. At the same time, the cost of standard technical support changes proportionally.
But here there were a couple of tar ladles:
1. The discount is associated with specific Order Forms, and the purchase of new licenses does not affect the cost of the STP for licenses purchased earlier. Those. your STP for the same product purchased under different Order Forms may cost differently. If your company grew, purchase volumes increased, the discount increased, and you wanted to pay less for the STP of the first licenses, then there are no options - write the Termination Letter, refuse them, then buy them again, but with a bigger discount.
2. At the same time, the refusal of a part of the licenses within one Order Form leads to the recalculation of the discount for all products purchased under this Order Form. The recalculation algorithm, if any, is known only to Oracle. I know from experience that although the cost of the STP does not increase, it may not decrease at all, making it pointless to refuse a small part of the licenses from one Order Form in order to reduce the amount of the STP.
After the purchase, SUN Oracle began to extend its proven technical support policy to equipment:
1. The number of technical support options has been reduced.
2. A penalty has been introduced for the missed period of technical support - as usual, one and a half times higher than the cost of TP for the same period.
3. In order to force everyone to buy technical support, service centers were generally forbidden to repair hardware not covered by the technical support contract.
Wonderful products are being developed at Oracle (they say that only installers have not succeeded in any way), and you can easily get them from the official site, and there is no protection against unlicensed use ...
But it’s better to carefully read the license agreement before development, so as not to there were then unpleasant surprises.
1. Oracle Licensing and Services Agreement (in Russian and English).
2. Oracle Software Technical Support Policies.
3. Price lists of Oracle.
Starting development of your applications on Oracle is very simple, and Oracle will not take money for it. The interesting part will begin later, when the project will need to be legalized.
Order Form and Cost of Standard Technical Support
Each time you purchase Oracle licenses, both parties sign a document called the “Order Form,” which contains a listing of the licenses, their effective date, and cost.
For all its products and technical support, Oracle requires 100% prepayment. An exception to this rule can only be received by budget organizations by asking for it in an official letter.
When purchasing software products, standard technical support for them for a period of 1 year is immediately sold without fail.
The essence of standard technical support (hereinafter - STP) is that the person who bought it has the right to upgrade to the next version of the software for free, and also gets access to support.oracle.com, where you can register your bug reports, read solutions from others, download patches .
Of course, under the STP program, Oracle solves only massive problems. If you want to get the attention of Oracle engineers specifically for your configuration, then you need to buy extended technical support for standard TP (the Oracle manager will figure out how many hours and what they will need to spend, multiply by 3.14, etc.). Of course, 100% prepayment is required, and at the end of the contract unspent funds are not returned and are not transferred to the next period of extended support.
The cost of STP for the 1st year is 22% of the cost of licenses specified in the Order Form. Each subsequent year, the cost of STP increases by 3% of its value (not from the cost of licenses, but by 3% from its previous value).
Oracle calls this premium "inflation rate." In the license agreement [ 1] Oracle promises not to increase the cost of standard tech support by more than 4% per year (Clause H on page 4).
Consequences of refusing technical support
You can refuse standard technical support from the second year onwards and continue to legally use the purchased products, but there are two nuances:
1. If you ever need an STP later, then before you can buy it, Oracle will require you to pay a fine - 1.5 times more than a standard TP would cost for a missed period.
It is clear that in this way Oracle is insured against the options “every 3 years I bought STP for a period of 1 year and updated the software version”. In my opinion, a certain amount for the renewal of TP can be claimed, but the presence of a raising coefficient goes completely beyond the bounds of good. Not only that, in fact, Oracle receives payment for an unproven service (this is illegal in Russia), it’s also 1.5 times more.
2. Oracle divides its software products into “subset of licenses” - groups of licenses for their intended purpose (Database, Middleware, Applications, etc.), and it does not matter that they are purchased at different times for different Order Forms.
For example, all Oracle Database you purchased will be assigned to one “set of licenses”, and WebLogic Server will fall into another. For more details, which software is included in which “bundle”, see Oracle Software Technical Support Policies [ 2 ].
Oracle requires that the User all licenses from one “bundle” be at the same level of standard technical support. There are two levels - “there is STP” and “there is no STP”.
Now suppose you have a long-bought Database Standard, on which you have some kind of auxiliary system running, and you did not need an STP on it. Over time, you needed to buy Database Enterprise for the business-critical task. So you got a penalty for the missed STP period for DB Standard.
Oracle offers a wonderful way out of this situation - to abandon the "extra" licenses for which you do not want to pay a penalty for the missed STP period by writing the so-called Termination Letter.
Here, some will think about whether it is possible to transfer DB Standard to a friendly legal entity before purchasing a DBE. Without delving into it, I’ll note that sharing Oracle with different “own” legal entities is also not easy, for example, you can’t let users from another legal entity to DB if it is licensed under NUP and not on CPU.
Oracle Discount Policy Features
One of the positive aspects of cooperation with Oracle is that if you buy licenses for millions of dollars, you have a chance to get a big discount, even more than 50% of the GPL (standard price list) [ 3 ]. At the same time, the cost of standard technical support changes proportionally.
But here there were a couple of tar ladles:
1. The discount is associated with specific Order Forms, and the purchase of new licenses does not affect the cost of the STP for licenses purchased earlier. Those. your STP for the same product purchased under different Order Forms may cost differently. If your company grew, purchase volumes increased, the discount increased, and you wanted to pay less for the STP of the first licenses, then there are no options - write the Termination Letter, refuse them, then buy them again, but with a bigger discount.
2. At the same time, the refusal of a part of the licenses within one Order Form leads to the recalculation of the discount for all products purchased under this Order Form. The recalculation algorithm, if any, is known only to Oracle. I know from experience that although the cost of the STP does not increase, it may not decrease at all, making it pointless to refuse a small part of the licenses from one Order Form in order to reduce the amount of the STP.
Goodbye SUN
After the purchase, SUN Oracle began to extend its proven technical support policy to equipment:
1. The number of technical support options has been reduced.
2. A penalty has been introduced for the missed period of technical support - as usual, one and a half times higher than the cost of TP for the same period.
3. In order to force everyone to buy technical support, service centers were generally forbidden to repair hardware not covered by the technical support contract.
Conclusion
Wonderful products are being developed at Oracle (they say that only installers have not succeeded in any way), and you can easily get them from the official site, and there is no protection against unlicensed use ...
But it’s better to carefully read the license agreement before development, so as not to there were then unpleasant surprises.
References
1. Oracle Licensing and Services Agreement (in Russian and English).
2. Oracle Software Technical Support Policies.
3. Price lists of Oracle.