Oracle maintains what I consider to be the most aggressive audit
program of any major software publisher. Its licensing rules can be
extremely difficult to understand, and they frequently are not
clearly stated in the applicable license agreements. Moreover,
Oracle's License Management Services (LMS) team typically is
unforgiving when it comes time to apply those rules, and it often
uses Oracle's ambiguous license terms and confusingly
constructed contracts to prepare audit findings that can cause
heart palpitations for business owners.
Companies that have been audited by Oracle can (and sometimes
do) attest to its distinctiveness in this regard. Among other
publishers, Microsoft is similarly inflexible in the application of
its license rules, but those rules generally are more clearly
stated and accessible for software asset management teams.
Conversely, IBM's licensing rules can be even more byzantine
than Oracle's, but my experience is that it often is
