Oracle on Amazon RDS: licensee beware (Part 1)

It sounds like a great deal at first: spin up a fully-managed Oracle database instance with the license cost already baked in. And in a lot of ways, it can be a good deal. Take a look at the expense of managing the database, doing backups & patching, plus the hardware and software, and Oracle on Amazon RDS can be a great deal. But as always, be careful about the details.
Licensing Oracle on AWS? A Word of Caution
When Licensing Oracle on AWS, we want to offer a word of caution. Other licensing firms are suggesting that a recent policy announcement is opening a “wide window” of opportunity. We don’t see it that way at all: caveat emptor or “buyer beware.”