{"id":1301,"date":"2007-07-29T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-29T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/?p=1301"},"modified":"2007-07-29T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-29T12:00:00","slug":"otn-and-development-licenses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/29\/otn-and-development-licenses\/","title":{"rendered":"OTN and Development Licenses"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m very late to this particular party (things move quickly these days) and I was going to jump into this discussion several times this week because it’s a subject dear to my heart, but you know how it is – work etc.<\/p>\n

First of all I noticed Kevin Closson’s blog<\/a> and the associated thread on Oracle-L. (It’s a long thread, but here’s<\/a> where I suggest you pick it up.) I was stunned to realise that people might think it reasonable to use as many Oracle development systems for their company’s work as they like without paying any licence fees! It concerns me that people would build a company on such activity, but it seems I’m wrong. Then again, Oracle’s licenses are never the most readable documents, so maybe it’s a simple misunderstanding? Then again, maybe they’re so long-winded because business users can’t be trusted to pay for the software that they use? That’s probably unfair, but that’s how it looks to me.<\/p>\n

Next was Niall’s particular reading of the licence<\/a> which struck me as particularly depressing and not the way I’d always read OTN’s intentions.<\/p>\n

Then was Howard’s follow-up<\/a> which was the closest to my own understanding.<\/p>\n

I don’t really want to focus on the online debate, however. What’s absolutely crucial about this discussion is that one of the key points of just about every course I taught (40+, I reckon) was that the best way to learn was to download a copy of the software from OTN so that you could play around with it in your own time. That’s an immensely valuable resource and one that I keep encouraging people to use.<\/p>\n

I remember a time when getting hold of a legal copy of Oracle was beyond the reach of most dedicated IT professionals. Not everyone has the time or the server resources available at work for experimentation, so when Oracle started making downloads available on OTN, I was very pleased indeed. I was also delighted to see that the people at OTN have clarified the self-education issue. As someone who’s always happy to offer a negative perspective, I see it as an entirely positive and welcome step. Good for them!<\/p>\n

So nothing’s really changed. You can use whatever software you want for your personal experimentation and companies who are in the process of developing applications for themselves or others for a profit have to pay for licences, with the Oracle Partner Network being a useful option for smaller organisations. As Mark Rittman points out on his comment to Niall’s Blog, that can be as low as about a thousand quid. Knowing how significant Learning Tree’s license payments to Oracle were for classroom software, that seems like an exceptional deal.<\/p>\n

P.S. Not to put a cat amongst the pigeons, but does this mean that any live demos I do at Oracle conferences need to use a licenced copy? If so, maybe I’ll need to reconsider demos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m very late to this particular party (things move quickly these days) and I was going to jump into this discussion several times this week because it’s a subject dear to my heart, but you know how it is – work etc. First of all I noticed Kevin Closson’s blog and the associated thread on… Continue reading OTN and Development Licenses<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":980,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2005\/04\/08\/essential-reading\/","url_meta":{"origin":1301,"position":0},"title":"Essential Reading","date":"April 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I'd like to point you towards several articles around the ongoing Oracle bun-fights I mentioned in a previous posting. 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