[xeeeeeeeeeeenu]

Oracle products are outrageously expensive, but I wouldn't call their licensing complicated. Microsoft's model (with CALs) is much more opaque and they refuse to clarify it. I can't comment on IBM licensing though, unfortunately I know nothing about it.

[SteveNuts]

Oracle has the exact same thing, they just call it "Named users" or "NUP's" rather than "CAL".

https://www.peakindicators.com/blog/oracle-licensing-nups-pe...

[hermitdev]

I don't know about current IBM licensing, but for DB2 UDB server on Windows circa 2001, it was was something like $150k per CPU per year (pre multicore, only SMP at the time).