Comments on: Should Oracle charge for patches?

By: Hampus

Hampus — Tue, 23 May 2006 16:03:00 +0000

Couldn’t agree more, especially when you see all the hobbyists without metalink logins. They find a bug or need a new patch release to get Oracle working on their system.
They get nothing and probably turn to another DB.

By: Noons

Noons — Fri, 19 May 2006 00:58:00 +0000

Given Oracle’s abysmal record with bug fixing in the last 8 years or so – namely their insistence on including bug fixes in upgrades instead of making them available in their native version, it’s really hard to come up with a convincing story for those who may be in a budget…

If I had to chose a database nowadays I’d certainly not pick them, quite frankly: Oracle is just too expensive for what it offers and their maintenance and support are not worth the paper they’re printed on!

If I have to pay for crap, I’d rather not pay. Ie, much better to move to MySQL or something similar.

Sorry, but it needs to be said.

By: Gary Myers

Gary Myers — Thu, 18 May 2006 22:07:00 +0000

All out of my area as I don’t deal with contracts etc, but…
Is it the case that they would not be licensed to run 9.2.0.7, or that they don’t have access to support to get the patches.
I can see that, where an organisation uses an Oracle database solely for a third-party application, that organisation doesn’t need and shouldn’t pay for Oracle support. If something is wrong, they deal with the application’s supplier who may need to deal with Oracle.
In fact, in that case you probably shouldn’t be downloading the latest patchset until the third-party supplier approves it and makes it available.

So I do see a place for an Oracle license that doesn’t allow download access to patches, but does allow the later patch version to be used.

The problem I see here is that the company should take responsibility for keeping it up to date, taking out whatever license is appropriate for that, either with Oracle or through a third-party application supplier.