How to Deal with Oracle Licenses
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Enterprises get tips from a consultant on dealing with compliance, discounts, ongoing support, and terms and conditions.
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Know whether your copy of Windows is licensed? The software maker might ask you this next time you visit its download site.
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Mixes with new crowd Oracle is ending its brief acquisition lull with one of its largest software deals. The database giant will buy Hyperion Solutions, also an Oracle competitor in the business intelligence market and an important partner of SAP, for $3.3bn, or $52 a share - a handsome 21 per cent premium for stockholders.â¦
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(Source: Macrovision)  There is a significant increase in electronic licensing among software publishers. In this paper, Macrovision outlines the business processes that make up the license lifecycle. The paper concludes with a brief description of how Nokia successfully anticipated and addressed operational issues prior to launching electronic licensing in their products.
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InfoWorld - SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- Noting two evolving areas of software licensing, Microsoft is pondering how to license when multiple instances of an application are run on a single computer, but is not eyeing a plan for utility-based computing, in which charges are based on individual usage.
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Sybase, Inc. has provided the Linux community with a whopping endowment: a free distribution of its enterprise class Linux database. Developers will be able to build, test and deploy applications without being charged a license fee.
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Rob Richards mentioned in a previous book review about some of the issues he was having getting the Oracle extension enabled on his Fedora 8 system. Well, he's come back after doing some more testing/compiling and has found some resolution to his issues.   I really didn't need to get it running, but the sheer fact that I tried it and it wouldn't work, pissed me off enough to spend some time getting it resolved. Hopefully this helps anyone else having the same problem. I am currently using instant client 11.1, but I did try the 10.2 version with the same results.   He steps through the process he followed - tracking down the missing libaio files, correcting an issue with SELinux loading the Oracle libraries and his realization: he just needed to allow text relocation. Included in the post are the command line calls that'd need to be made to make it all happen.
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Four basic licensing models will be available for all Oracle products, including J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft and Siebel applications.
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(InfoWorld) - Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz showed up Thursday evening at the Burton Group Catalyst Conference and declared he would not answer questions about the GNU general public license version 3, but he did disclose his lifelong fantasy concerning open source licensing. The GPLv3, which is expected to be released at noon on Friday, has been the focus of a public exchange between Schwartz and Linux creator Linus Torvalds over the future of open source licensing and the relationship between OpenSolaris and Linux. Schwartz, who briefly stopped to talk to reporters, said he wants licensing to be kept simple. "I want to get to uniform licenses for everything we do," Schwartz said. "So if you look at Sun you say 'Oh, I know you. I get you.'" Schwartz did not say which license he was considering. Sun has developed its own open source license, Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). Then he added, "One of my great fantasies in life is that the number of people with opinions on open source licenses will come roughly into balance with the number of people who have read them." "Go read the Mozilla license," he said. "It is very difficult for an international company to use it because it is for the [United States] only. What do I tell people in China? Sorry, if you have a gripe you need to come back to Santa Clara," he said with a laugh. Schwartz then took the stage and joked with the audience, thanking them for Sun's fourth-quarter revenue. He then talked about helping customers to condense their infrastructure by consolidating workloads, to run virtualized infrastructure at scale, and to develop compelling services. He singled out identity as one of those services. He then laid out Sun's position on open source software and licensing. "The core value of Sun comes down to a basic set of things," he said. "Everything we build will be built in the open source community, it will be built with a community of partners around us and, with all deference to my friends from the Linux world, under a coherent license that we can draft, ideally in concert with Linus, so we end up with a common platform and a common opportunity." "We're every way thinking to combine the communities because we think that gives us the critical mass to go after the big opportunities in the marketplace." Shortly afterward Schwartz welcomed questions from the crowd, but added "just not about GPLv3, please." Earlier this month, Torvalds used the Linux Kernel Mailing List to slam Sun in responding to a post about Sun and open source licensing: "You are making the fundamental mistake of thinking that Sun is in this to actually further some open source agenda." He then launched into a "cynical prediction" slamming Sun's licensing interests around the OpenSolaris kernel and GPLv3, and predicting Sun would use licensing to protect patents on its ZFS file system rather than make it freely and widely available to the open source community. The Linux kernel is licensed under GPLv2, and kernel developers have said there is little chance the Linux community would move to the new GPLv3 because it is not significantly better than GPLv2 and could take six months or more to convert all the components of the kernel. "A GPLv3-only release [of the OpenSolaris kernel] would actually let [Sun] look good, and still keep Linux from taking their interesting parts, and would allow them to take at least parts of Linux without giving anything back (ahh, the joys of license fragmentation)," Torvalds wrote. A day later, Schwartz responded on his blog in a friendly tone disputing Torvalds contention the Linux hurts Sun and saying Linux was not the enemy. Schwartz, writing on his blog, addresses Torvalds personally: "We want to work together, we want to join hands and communities -- we have no intention of holding anything back, or pulling patent nonsense. And to prove the sincerity of the offer, I invite you to my house for dinner. I'll cook, you bring the wine. A mashup in the truest sense." Like the licensing, there also was no word Thursday night about dinner.
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Letter Can collective database licensing cure this tragedy of the commons?
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(InfoWorld) - Monsoon Multimedia and the Software Freedom Law Center are discussing a settlement regarding Monsoon's open-source licensing violation, but a deal isn't certain. "Simply coming into compliance now is not sufficient to settle the matter because that would mean anyone can violate the license until caught because the only punishment would be to come into compliance," said Dan Ravicher, SFLC's legal director, in a statement. He confirmed that the parties are in settlement discussions but said an agreement hasn't yet been reached. In a statement, Monsoon said that it has always intended to comply with the licensing requirements and expects to do so within the next couple of weeks. Last week,Â the SFLC filed a lawsuit against Monsoon on behalf of two of the creators of BusyBox, a lightweight set of Unix utilities used in embedded systems. BusyBox claims that even after repeated requests, Monsoon failed to publish its source code. Monsoon uses BusyBox under the GNU General Public License version 2, which requires distributors of software that uses the licensed software to make their source code available. Failing to do so is considered copyright infringement. The SFLC said this is the first case they know of filed in the U.S. to enforce an open-source license. It is being closely watched as a test of the legal strength of GPL2. If the case goes to trial, the key decision will be whether the court decides that GPL2 is a license or a contract, said James Gatto, a lawyer who leads the open-source team at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, which is based in New York and is not involved in the lawsuit. If the court decides GPL2 is a contract, it would be a blow to the open-source community. That's because the remedy for breach of contract is damages for losses, he said. "Here, what's the loss to a plaintiff that doesn't charge for the software?" he said. The court can also in some cases require specific actions in a breach of contract case, he said. In a licensing arrangement, the defendant would be charged with copyright infringement, entitling the plaintiff to damages and an injunction. It is unusual for an open-source licensing issue to reach the courts. Typically, the parties work it out privately. "There's not enough at stake generally for people not to comply," Gatto said. In Europe, the GPL Violations Project has brought at least one open-source licensing case to court.
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Rob Richards has posted his own review of the Packt Publishing book "PHP Oracle Web Development" to his blog today.   Overrall I would have to say that PHP Oracle Web Development is a good book for a PHP developer needing to get up to speed quickly working with an Oracle database. [...] The only place I found the book lacking was the initial setup of the environment.   The environment they chose to go with was a Windows setup which caused him problem when he tried to compile with the oci8 extensions - libraries weren't found where they were needed. His solution? Setting his ORACLE_HOME to the right location then all was well.
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(InfoWorld) - Oracle went down to the wire in filing its first amended complaint against applications rival SAP Friday in a bitter wrangle over the alleged theft of trade secrets. Under aÂ legal stipulation agreed in mid-May, Oracle had until June 1 to file an amended complaint, while SAP must now respond to Oracle's amended complaint by July 2. Oracle added federal copyright infringement and breach of contract claims on top ofÂ its original charges, which included violations of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and of California's Computer Data Access and Fraud Act along with unfair competition and intentional and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage. Oracle filed the original lawsuit on March 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against SAP, its SAP America division, its TomorrowNow subsidiary, and 50 unnamed individuals Oracle claimed were SAP employees. In both the original and the amended complaints, Oracle charged SAP with committing "corporate theft on a grand scale," alleging that one or more staff at TomorrowNow pretended to be Oracle customers andÂ illegally hacked into its secure support Web siteÂ for users of Oracle's PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications and downloaded a vast amount of material. TomorrowNow provides third-party maintenance and support largely to customers using software Oracle acquired through its purchases of PeopleSoft and Siebel. Oracle further alleged that SAP then copied the content it had accessed from the Oracle site and used it to offer Oracle customers cut-rate support services as the first step in eventually persuading the users to migrate over to SAP's rival applications. In a statement Friday, SAP noted the "repeated delays" in Oracle filing its amended complaint. "Oracle now apparently has registered some copyrights, so it adds a copyright claim," SAP said. "And, it adds a breach of contract claim based on previously stated allegations. SAP plans to respond to the amended complaint by July 2, in accordance with the Court's schedule. At that time, SAP will set the record straight regarding Oracle's allegations. We are eager to vigorously defend this case." Oracle said it had discovered the illegal access to its Customer Connection user support Web site after noting periods of unusually heavy download activity from the site in late November and December 2006. "The downloads spanned every library in the Customer Connection support Web site," the vendor said in the complaint. Using one customer's credentials, those of Honeywell International, SAP allegedly downloaded almost 1,800 items per day for four days straight versus that customer's normal download pattern of 20 items a month. Oracle alleged that it has connected many of those downloads to a specific TomorrowNow employee Wade Walden, who previously worked at PeopleSoft. Each customer searching on the Customer Connection Web site has to click on a button after each search to indicate if the search result helped solve their particular problem. Oracle compiled that data on a regular basis to see how well the system is performing and that's how the vendor noticed sudden spikes in the number of clicks on that button, thousands of clicks per customer and each response occurred in a matter of seconds. "Given the extreme speed at which the activity occurred, these clicks could not reflect real responses from any human customers actually reading the solutions they had accessed," the complaint stated. Instead, Oracle believes an automated process was used to access the materials on the site "with lightning speed." Oracle claims to have found more than 10,000 unauthorized downloads of its software and support materials, which it then traced to an IP address in Bryan, Texas, an SAP America branch office location and the headquarters of TomorrowNow. Oracle adds that the IP address is connected directly to SAP's computer network. "Indeed, Oracle's server logs have recorded access through this same IP address by computers labeled with SAP identifiers using SAP IP addresses," the complaint stated. Oracle listed customers whose identities TomorrowNow had allegedly purloined, including Bear, Stearns & Co., Border Foods, Interbrew UK, Merck, and OCE-Technologies. SAP employees allegedly used bizarre user names including xx, ss, User, and NULL along with fake e-mail addresses, including test@testyomama.com, and fake phone numbers like 123-456-7897, Oracle alleged in the complaint. "All of these customers whose IDs SAP appropriated had one critical fact in common: they were, or were just about to become, new customers of SAP TN [TomorrowNow] -- SAP AG's and SAP America's software support subsidiary whose sole purpose is to compete with Oracle," the complaint stated. Oracle claimed the downloads occurred between September 2006 and January 2007. The complaint added, "Oracle also has concerns that SAP may have enhanced or improved its own software application offerings using information gleaned from Oracle's illegally copied software and support materials." Oracle said in the complaint that it's still unaware of the identities of the unnamed 50 SAP employees charged in the lawsuit. After discovery takes place in the lawsuit, Oracle hopes to unmask them and will amend its complaint accordingly. In the amended complaint, Oracle stated that its software and support materials are registered with the Copyright Office and thus protected under the Federal Copyright Act. The vendor goes on to say that it has now obtained over 40 certificates of registration from the Register of Copyright covering the materials allegedly stolen by SAP. Oracle listed the certificates in the amended complaint; most of the materials were registered on April 26, 2007. Oracle wants the judge in the case to stop SAP's alleged "illegal intrusions and theft," prevent the vendor from using the materials it's alleged to have obtained and to recover damages and attorneys' fees. The case was originally assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Maxine M. Chesney in San Francisco, but she recused herself in early May for reasons that were not disclosed. U.S. District Court Judge Martin J. Jenkins, also in San Francisco, is now presiding over the case. The amended complaint isÂ on Oracle's Web site.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Purchasing a permanent license to its pioneering OS is a shrewd move.
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Sybase Inc. is trying to lure businesses seeking low-cost open source DBMS alternatives by offering a free production license for its Adaptive Server Enterprise Express Edition on Linux.
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Lions lay down with lambs The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has approved two of Microsoft's shared source licenses. The controversial move paves the way for developers to use the Microsoft Reciprocal License and the Microsoft Public License as a valid methodology for creating open source applications.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - A recent federal court ruling pertaining to open-source software in model railroads could derail enforcement of open-source licenses altogether, according to Mark Radcliffe, general counsel for the Open Source Initiative. If allowed to stand, the decision could withhold an important and expected remedy from open-source licensors, that being the ability to get an injunction against license violations, Radcliffe said. But the case does not necessarily set a precedent for other judges to follow, countered Eben Moglen, founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center. In the case, the plaintiff, Robert Jacobsen, claimed that the defendant, Matthew Katzer, sought royalties from Jacobsen on software covered by invalid patents obtained on open-source software. The software in this case was from the JMRI (Java Model Railroad Interface) Project, with which Jacobsen is involved. The original complaint is viewable here. According to court filings by Jacobsen, Katzer filed a patent application tailored to the capabilities of JMRI three days after the release of new JMRI software in 2002. The plaintiff alleged breach of the obscure Artistic License for open-source software and copyright infringement due to the removal of original copyright notices and substituting the name of Katzen's company, Radcliffe said.Â  But in a ruling on the case in San Francisco on August 17, Judge Jeffrey S. White denied a motion by the plaintiff seeking a preliminary injunction from infringing copyrighted open-source material. To establish copyright infringement, the plaintiff needs to show ownership of the copyrights and copying by the defendants, the judge said. Defendants, meanwhile, said they voluntarily ceased all potentially infringing activities. "This is one of the first cases about enforcement of any open-source licenses," Radcliffe said. In his ruling, the judge said the Artistic License was a contract and the failure to include copyright notices was not a restriction on the scope of the license, according to Radcliffe. Jacobsen sought to have Katzer put copyright notices in his software reflecting that it was open source. "What the court said was that remedy is not available," said Radcliffe. The remedy for contract violations under US law is damages, not injunctive relief, in which the court would order a party to cease a violation, Radcliffe wrote in his blog. The case, Radcliffe said, is a blow to the fundamental basis of open-source software, he said. "Most people in open source believe if you violate the license, you're outside it, Radcliffe said. "What this case indicates is that expectation may be wrong," he said. Assessing damages for use of open-source software is difficult because the software is given away free, according to Victoria Hall, attorney for the plaintiff. "What are the damages for an open-source project? These aren't your typical contract damages," she said. The case raises questions about the rights of those who release software via open source. "What rights do they have, and how strong are those rights?" Hall asked. But she and Moglen pointed out that the case does not necessarily set a precedent for future cases. "It seems to me a not very important ruling," said Moglen, who has not been involved in the case. The Software Freedom Law Center provides free legal services to those who make and distribute free and open-source software. "I do believe that the use of a more carefully drafted and more industry-tested license will probably help courts and other parties to deal with software in a more informed and accurate way," Moglen said. To avoid the lack of clarity in the Artistic License, the JMRI Project will switch to the GNU General Public License. "I think the big advantage [of GPL] is the automatic license revocation that is present in GPL that is not present in Artistic License," said Hall. Jacobsen also plans to appeal the judge's ruling, said Hall. Katzer defined to comment on the case. His attorneys did not return phone calls from InfoWorld. The judge set a September 14 date for a case management conference to further deliberate on the matter.