jfabre

I'm really confused about Oracle licensing.

Is there a way for developers to run an Oracle db on their machine for a service that already runs in production without having to pay for a license?

Been working for a couple months for a big co that mainly uses Oracle as their database and how my team work is that we all share a remote dev database that some dba manages.

I proposed that we all install a copy of that db on our machines so that we can make changes without impacting everyone else. We're already handling schema changes through version control.

I had a meeting with a dba at my company today and he says we would have to buy licenses for every single db we install on our machines.

Is he right? Is Oracle really gouging their customers like that? It seems hard to believe. I read their licenses online and he "seems to be right", but I'm not a lawyer.

Thanks for the help.