Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack - Licensing

[pedro.oliveira]

We are using Oracle VM VirtualBox on MacBooks on our company.

We use it to virtualize Windows machines for using Visual Studio.

Lately the need for redirecting USB 3.0 ports to the machine has arised.

For that we are planning to install the VM VirtualBox Extension Pack and enable USB 3.0 support.

But it seems that it is only free for personal or evaluation use.

Does anyone know if we need to buy the Oracle VM VirtualBox Enterprise license?

Tried contacting Oracle through several ways, but was either redirected to yet another phone number or to post this question on this forum.

Really annoyed with Oracle's customer management right now. Never had such a bad experience...

[andyp73]

2 Grant of license. Oracle grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited license without fees to reproduce, install, execute, and use internally the Product on Host Computers for your Personal Use, Educational Use, or Evaluation. “Personal Use” is noncommercial use solely by the person downloading the Product from Oracle on a single Host Computer, provided that no more than one client or remote computer is connected to that Host Computer and that client or remote computer is used solely to remotely view the Guest Computer(s). “Educational Use” is any use by teachers or students in an academic institution (schools, colleges and universities) as part of the institution’s educational curriculum. “Evaluation” means testing the Product for up to thirty (30) days; after expiry of that term, you are no longer permitted to use the Product. Personal Use and/or Educational Use expressly exclude any use of the Product for commercial purposes or to operate, run, or act on behalf of or for the benefit of a business, organization, governmental organization, or educational institution.

The definitions within the license agreement look very clear to me so it looks as though you need the VirtualBox Enterprise license. You can buy the licenses online through the Oracle Store. Minimum order is 100 licenses at $61 each.

NOTE: I am not a lawyer nor an Oracle representative so all of the above could be complete nonsense!

-Andy.

[mpack]

Really annoyed with Oracle's customer management right now. Never had such a bad experience...

Why would you be annoyed? I assume you are not a customer, just another user of the free download, therefore you got exactly the short shrift you were entitled to. People who are not customers need to ask their questions in the user forums, i.e. here.

Why do you need to redirect USB 3? What kind of device do you need to redirect? USB flash drives can be accessed quite handily as shared folders.