7 ms·

Oracle and "always free"? Boy are these interesting times...

Mrdarknezz 5y ago
Almost sounds like a paradox
bbarnett 5y ago
They're probably always free, until $x happens. Then there's an audit, you're found non-compliant, and now they own your house. Oracle, 2021.
- LadyCailin 5y ago
  From what I understand, suing people is a great business strategy. Much better than producing any actual value.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    I mean, it bought a Hawaiian island. Capitalism at its finest, really.
tootie 5y ago
It's hilarious given that they used to charge you per CPU _for software_. You had to bring your own CPUs.
- Eeems 5y ago
  Pretty sure they still do for some software they sell ;)
- jonfw 5y ago
  That's still a common billing model- how Red Hat bills for openshift for instance. It's a simple and pretty good proxy for usage
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Maybe thats why POWER chips have so many SMT threads per core
- bityard 5y ago
  Oracle and VMware per-socket licensing is one of the main reasons server-class CPUs have gazillions of cores. A vSphere licence+support for a single machine can easily run into 5 figures.
gitfan86 5y ago
I'm sure the TOS says "terms and conditions may change at any time in the future". Always is a trademark and not meant to convey any future services.
- Topgamer7 5y ago
  Pretty sure every website will tell you everything is subject to change at any time at their leisure.
- nzealand 5y ago
  > To enable us to provide free Oracle Cloud accounts to our valued customers, we need to ensure that account holders are real people. We use your email, phone number, and credit/debit card for account set-up and identity verification. For users in the United States, you may see temporary charges of $1 on your account statement. Users in other countries will see a similar charge in their local currency. These are verification holds that will be removed automatically, typically within 3 to 5 days. > We will not use your credit/debit card information to automatically upgrade your Always Free or Free Trial to paid without first getting your explicit approval. I gave a throw away google email and google voice and just used my first initials, the one thing I could not use was a throw away debit card, they really wanted a real credit card. So far so good. One guy complained they shut his server off after he transitioned from the $300 free credits in the first month to always free. I didn't have that issue, although I do check the billing statements periodically.

Almost sounds like a paradox

They're probably always free, until $x happens. Then there's an audit, you're found non-compliant, and now they own your house. Oracle, 2021.

LadyCailin 5y ago
From what I understand, suing people is a great business strategy. Much better than producing any actual value.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  I mean, it bought a Hawaiian island. Capitalism at its finest, really.

tootie 5y ago

It's hilarious given that they used to charge you per CPU _for software_. You had to bring your own CPUs.

Eeems 5y ago
Pretty sure they still do for some software they sell ;)
jonfw 5y ago
That's still a common billing model- how Red Hat bills for openshift for instance. It's a simple and pretty good proxy for usage
mhh__ 5y ago
Maybe thats why POWER chips have so many SMT threads per core
bityard 5y ago
Oracle and VMware per-socket licensing is one of the main reasons server-class CPUs have gazillions of cores. A vSphere licence+support for a single machine can easily run into 5 figures.

gitfan86 5y ago

I'm sure the TOS says "terms and conditions may change at any time in the future". Always is a trademark and not meant to convey any future services.

Topgamer7 5y ago
Pretty sure every website will tell you everything is subject to change at any time at their leisure.
nzealand 5y ago
> To enable us to provide free Oracle Cloud accounts to our valued customers, we need to ensure that account holders are real people. We use your email, phone number, and credit/debit card for account set-up and identity verification. For users in the United States, you may see temporary charges of $1 on your account statement. Users in other countries will see a similar charge in their local currency. These are verification holds that will be removed automatically, typically within 3 to 5 days. > We will not use your credit/debit card information to automatically upgrade your Always Free or Free Trial to paid without first getting your explicit approval. I gave a throw away google email and google voice and just used my first initials, the one thing I could not use was a throw away debit card, they really wanted a real credit card. So far so good. One guy complained they shut his server off after he transitioned from the $300 free credits in the first month to always free. I didn't have that issue, although I do check the billing statements periodically.