Oracle in steep price hike for Java licences based on 'total number of employees'

The vendor has been met with a storm of criticism

Oracle's latest price hike for Java standard edition (SE) licensing has been met with controversy as the cloud vendor switches from charging based on Java users to total number of employees.

Oracle's 2023 price list for the Java SE Universal subscription reveals the company is basing costs on total employee counts, not just employees using Java.

The price list, published last week, shows costs starting at $15 per employee for companies with 1-999 employees, and scaling down to a minimum of $5.25 for companies with 40,000+ employees.

Oracle provided an example of the new system in operation. A company with 28,000 employees would expect to pay $6.75 per employee per month - including full-time, part-time, temporary and even contractors - equalling $2.268 million a year.

The Java SE Universal subscription has replaced the legacy Java SE subscription the company first launched in 2018, which was charged per processor for servers and cloud instances, and per user for PCs.

Oracle notably fails to highlight the change in its FAQ page, though does detail a few other ways in which the Universal subscription differs from legacy. In a welcome move, permitted use is universal across desktop, servers and third party clouds, and licencees will receive triage support for their entire Java portfolio.

However, while this is much more convenient for employees who use Java across different machines, it will certainly add costs for companies where that doesn't apply.

Oracle promises that legacy users will, for now, be able to renew under their existing terms and conditions, but is likely to pressure a move to the new subscription in the future.

Ian Hill, director of information & cybersecurity at Upp, told CRN sister-site Computing: "I'm not surprised, this move was inevitable, and another example of Oracle living up to its reputation as one of Silicon Valley's biggest corporate bullies. Remember a former Oracle president's 'I think it would be more fun to crush them' comment relating to the potential purchase of Salesforce.

"Considering that Java is in principle open source, ever since Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010 it was always on the cards that they would find a way around the open source hurdle and fully commercialise Java and maximise its profit potential through what some might argue is a form of legalised ransomware. After all, to the pursuit of profit, customers are just a necessary inconvenience."

Steven Capper, group CIO at SNC Lavalin, told Computing, "We are not affected [by the Java price rise], however they are moving other products to 'per user' which will add CAD$3 million+ to our bill… Not impressed, but all vendors seem to have cottoned on to this trend and pushing up prices that are unjustified."

Nathan Biggs, CEO of consultancy House of Brick, wrote in a blog post that anyone using Java in their business is "potentially on the hook for a massive subscription fee increase that may have very little benefit to your operation."

He continued: "We have already heard from our customers that they are being contacted (harassed) by their Java sales representatives to adopt this 'easier to understand subscription model.' We expect that legions of Oracle salespeople will be salivating to lock in these new subscriptions before the February end-of-quarter deadline for their personal bonuses. This Java change also gives each Oracle rep an excuse to try to audit customers on their entire Oracle footprint (database, middleware, Java, applications), so preparing now is key to reducing potential unexpected costs."

We have reached out to Oracle for a comment.

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