Oracle has finally caved?a little?to industry outrage over its refusal to get in line with competitors IBM and Microsoft and update its licensing policy to accommodate multicore chips.

Licensing terms for the Oracle Store Web site now state that, for the purposes of counting how many processors need to be licensed, a multicore chip with “n” cores will be multiplied by 0.75. Oracle will then round up fractions to the next whole number.

For example, if you have a multicore chip with 11 cores, multiply 11 by 0.75, which equals 8.25. Round that up to nine processors, and that’s what you’ll be paying for.

Notwithstanding the three-quarters rule, Oracle will count only one processor when licensing Oracle Standard Edition One or Standard Edition programs on servers with a maximum of one processor with one or two cores.

Oracle plans to host a conference call Friday to discuss what a spokesperson referred to as the company’s multicore pricing policy “update,” although one software pricing expert contacted for this story was unsure whether this was a licensing change or merely a clarification of existing policy.

[ source : eWeek ]

Once again, could Oracle be on the move for higher incentives for companies, purchasing its multi-core system? or just another way of getting Business to purchase their product?