Is tangosol free to use with no limit in version 3.3(385)?

Question

I had downloaded the lasted version 385, There is no limit with date range now, and I view the coherence-enterprise.xml in tangosol.jar
<license>
<software>Oracle Coherence: Enterprise Edition</software>
<licensee>n/a</licensee>
<type>production</type>
<id>0x50A800CC0000011290D1AFCA71730128</id>
<signature>302D0215008C52A3A92ADB0BE627CDC57C691891F74C2A9E7502141B63BAE0145A1D00567ABA18F422FD900D529CEB</signature>
</license>
the type is production ,not eval
so it's mean tangosol is free now? thanks for your reply.

Answer 1

Hi anotherbug,
no, it does not mean that.
It means, that there is no bit-by-bit difference between a development and a production environment, and there is no technical limit.
However, you are allowed to use a software if you abide by its licence.
The licence of Oracle products is phrased so that in a development environment you are expected to pay zero bucks / CPU unit, and in a production environment you are expected to pay X bucks / CPU unit. The definition of CPU can vary from product to product, you should look up a big table for finding out which kind of CPU chip is considered how many CPU unit. The value X also varies from product to product and also depends on what kind of discount you get.
In case you do not pay this, then you do not abide by the licence, and therefore your using the products is unlicenced, which is roughly equivalent to theft, and for which Oracle or other vendors whose products you use unlicensed could sue you.
I believe (I am not sure about it), the license agreement also contains a paragraph, that the act of using the product in a production (or any) environment also consitutes a permission to Oracle (or other vendors whose product you use) to audit your usage of their product.
Obviously, if during this audit you are found to use more units than you purchased licences for, you are found guilty of violating the license. Also, I would not expect to be able to get any discounts for purchasing the product you are already found using (you technically accepted the price bianco).
Of course this is only my opinion. You are free to do as you choose. However, in your position I would rather pay for the software I use in production, in advance, particularly since the system you use it for will earn that money back anyway.
Best regards,
Robert