Recently, Oracle announced a price list called “Oracle Java SE Universal Subscription Global Price List”, which sets a new charging standard for Java SE.

The most noteworthy thing about this price list is that Oracle will be based on the company’stotal number of employeesto charge the corresponding fee instead ofNumber of employees using Java. This headcount-based pricing model has raised concerns that Java licensing costs could be significantly higher than in the past.

This price list divides the charging standard into eight different gears:

• Total number of employees 1-999: $15/person/month
• Total number of employees 1000-2999: $12/person/month
• Total number of employees 3000-9999: $10.5/person/month
• Total number of employees 10000-19999: $8.25/person/month
• Total number of employees 20000-29999: $6.75/person/month
• Total number of employees 30000-39999: $5.70/person/month
• Total number of employees 40000-49999: $5.25/person/month
• The total number of employees is 50,000+: no specific pricing is given, you need to consult Oracle for details

Prices above are in US dollars and are charged per employee per month. Oracle also gave an example in the price list, that is, if a company with a total of 28,000 employees, including full-time and part-time employees, as well as agents, consultants and contractors, will be charged an annual fee of 28,000 X 6.75 X 12 = 226.8 Ten thousand U.S. dollars.

That is to say, under this new charging model, if a company has a large number of developers and relies heavily on Java, the new charging model may not have a great impact; but the number of developers in the company is small, and Businesses with a very large headcount, and companies that require Java but don’t have a lot of dependencies, can have a big impact, because even if the company has only one developer using Java, it will be charged according to the total headcount.

Oracle’s expert consulting company House of Brick also simulated an enterprise scenario where a company with 250 employees, 20 desktop users, and 8 Java installed processors would pay $3,000 per year under the old model, while Oracle’s new model would pay $3,000 a year. The next would pay $45,000 per year, a 15-fold increase in costs.

However, Oracle stated in the new subscription model FAQ that customers of the old version of Java SE subscription products will continue to receive all the original rights and can renew according to the original terms (but it does not say whether it can be upgraded or downgraded based on the original subscription model, which may will force a change to your subscription model).Users of OpenJDK and the free Oracle JDK are not affected by the Java SE Universal Subscription.