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Use by one person, pay for all.
Oracle's "effort" for Java's subscription payment has made countless developers call out: "Play it and understand!"
Recently, according to The Register, Gartner, an information technology research and consulting company, estimates that most companies today will see subscription costs rise 2-5 times after accepting Oracle's new Java license terms.
A new charging model with "hidden mystery"
At the beginning of the year, Oracle released a new Java SE charging policy.
Officials describe the move as "a simple, low-cost monthly subscription service that includes Java SE licensing and support for desktop, server, or cloud deployment."
Compared with the previous fixed fee and pay-as-you-go models, the new price list can be described as "implicit mystery".
It is reported that all charging models are based on the total number of employees in the company to charge the corresponding fees, not the number of employees using Java SE.
To put it simply, under the new charging model, even if only one developer in an enterprise uses Java SE, Oracle will charge according to the total number of employees in the enterprise.
As the total number of employees increases, the starting price will gradually decrease. For businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees, charges start at $15 per employee per month.
And, The Register has pointed out that whether you are using a new version or an old version, as long as you download patches and updates from Oracle's website, you need to have a corresponding support license.
Many cases indicate that the cost will increase by 2 to 5 times
There is no doubt that the cost of many enterprises will increase sharply after being "forced to increase prices".
When the new billing model was first introduced, House of Bricks CEO Nathan Biggs estimated that the cost would increase to $45,000/year for a company with 250 employees, 20 Java desktop users, and 8 Java-installed processors , an increase of 1400%.
In addition, according to The Register, Nitish Tyagi, deputy principal analyst at Gartner, also made a case study on the new charging model.
For example, a company with 49,500 employees will pay $742,000 for the NUP license and $900,000 for the processor even if all employees subscribe to the license and the company runs Oracle JDK on 5,000 processors. License fees, totaling approximately US$ 1.65 million.
According to the new subscription model, it will cost $3.118 million. In contrast, prices have increased by 90%.
Nitish Tyagi also said: "For large enterprises, the cost is expected to increase by 2-5 times, mainly depending on the number of employees in the company."
By 2026, the proportion of Java deployment will exceed 80%
It's worth noting that Oracle defines employees as part-time, full-time, temporary, agents, contractors, as anyone supporting internal business operations must be licensed under the new Java Universal SE subscription model.
Therefore, after the launch of the new model, it also received complaints from many parties.
"One client experienced a 10-fold increase in Java costs after adopting a new billing model, " said Craig Guarente, founder and CEO of software licensing consultant Palisade Compliance.
According to Craig Guarente, many customers want to minimize Java usage and thus obtain lower prices.
Even so, the demand for Java has not decreased, but has increased.
According to Gartner estimates, by 2026, more than 80% of Java applications will be deployed on third-party Java runtimes, far exceeding the 65% in 2023.
In addition, Oracle is also ready to test whether users comply with what it believes to be the terms of the Java license, and it is estimated that within the next three years, 1/5 of Java users will face a license review.
Where should Java users go?
There are policies and measures to counter.
With the cost of the new model soaring, Gartner has given several operational options for Java users .
Developers can no longer run any updates and security patches since January 2019, but this is not feasible from a security perspective.
Migrating applications to Java 17 would also avoid this change, but it would involve a lot of work and not feasible for many.
The option to upgrade all Java applications to the latest version of OpenJDK will be unlimited due to the amount of work involved.
There is an option to switch to third-party Java products and offload all unlicensed Oracle JDK workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Users can painstakingly buy the new Java SE Universal Subscription, which is simple, and the price is more expensive.
Obviously, after consideration from multiple angles, the "compromise" of high charging standards has become the "best choice" for many users.
Over the past few months, the change of the Java license terms has become a foregone conclusion. In addition to touching the heartstrings of many companies and developers, it also provoked many netizens to ridicule:
"Java seems to be a chicken that lays golden eggs, but now it can't just lay one egg a day";
"This is a 'predatory' behavior";
"Java seems to have become a cash cow for Oracle";
"I've started using OpenJDK since the charge"...
Reference link:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/24/oracle_java_license_terms/?td=rt-4a
https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/oracle_java_licensing_change/
https://www.oracle.com/assets/java-se-subscription-pricelist-5028356.pdf
