Oracle targeting Java licenses for nonpayment

[Isgrimnur]

The Register

Oracle is massively ramping up audits of Java customers it claims are in breach of its licences – six years after it bought Sun Microsystems.

A growing number of Oracle customers and partners have been approached by Larry Ellison’s firm, which claims they are out of compliance on Java.
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The version of Java in contention is Java SE, with three paid flavours that range from $40 to $300 per named user and from $5,000 to $15,000 for a processor licence.
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Java SE is a broad and all-encompassing download that includes Java SE Advanced Desktop, introduced by Oracle in February 2014, and Java SE Advanced and Java SE Suite, introduced by Oracle in May 2011.

Java SE is free but Java SE Advanced Desktop, Advanced and Suite are not. Java SE Suite, for example, costs $300 per named user with a support bill of $66; there’s a per-processor option of $15,000 with a $3,300 support bill. Java SE comes with the free JDK and JRE, but Advanced Desktop, Advanced and Suite layer in additional capabilities such as Java Mission Control and Flight Recorder also known as JRockit Mission Control and JRockit Flight Recorder.

Also added is the Microsoft Windows Installer Enterprise JRE Installer for large-scale rollout of Java.

Java SE is free for what Oracle defines as “general purpose computing” – devices that in the words of its licence cover desktops, notebooks, smartphones and tablets. It is not free for what Oracle’s licence defines as “specialized embedded computers used in intelligent systems”, which Oracle further defines as - among other things - mobile phones, hand-held devices, networking switches and Blu-Ray players.
It sounds simple enough, doesn't it? But it is customers in these general-purpose settings getting hit by LMS. The reason is there’s no way to separate the paid Java SE sub products from the free Java SE umbrella at download as Oracle doesn’t offer separate installation software.

And you only become a designated user of, say, Java SE Suite, when you use the necessary bits associated with that profile – and then you pay accordingly.

If you want to roll out Java SE in a big deployment, as you would following development of your app, then you’ll need Microsoft Windows Installer Enterprise JRE Installer – and that’s not part of the free Java SE.

[GreenGoo]

This is one way to stop people using Java I guess.

[Grundbegriff]

It's really only for a few usage edge cases: redistribution with a commercial product under certain conditions, enterprise use of certain Java-related but inessential tuning tools-- that sort of thing.