Should read "Currently, there's no enforcement mechanism..."

There's no software enforcement mechanism in the flagship Oracle Enterprise DBMS either.

You can download it for free on the web.

From http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/Oracle_Licensing:

  A license is the "right to use" (RTU) the software and
  not the software itself. If you have a license, you can
  obtain a copy of the software through whatever means -
  order, download, use the CDs from your last project, etc.
  Please note that Oracle doesn't use software keys. You can
  just install the software and use it. It is up to you and
  your consciences to license the software before using it.

Does that means that I can legally use their software free of charge if my conscience doesn't prohibit me from using it unlicensed?

No. Every EULA you'll click through will include some clause restricting usage to 30 days for evaluation purposes, except in a few cases (db client, beta versions, XE edition, Technology Network stuff, Linux etc). And they do enforce that clause as soon as they find you're using any of their stuff. Plus, you need an account on their site to download pretty much anything, so they'll know what you download, and from time to time you might get a call to see how that "reviewing" is going, especially if you are not a customer yet.

It makes it very easy for people to get access to software and to learn, however, especially if they're covered by a company who is already a customer.

How does that play with the fact these changes seem to be checked into the GPL'd code? Wouldn't GPL itself give you a separate license to use the features regardless of whatever EULA Oracle comes up with?

Last I checked, the GPL didn't seem to grant the right to actually use anything.

Not if they are patented (and you reside in a country where software patents are valid).

I know there is a lot of debate about it, but as far as I understand it GPL is still regarded as including an implied patent grant. Fwiw:

http://en.swpat.org/wiki/GPLv2_and_patents

Warning; Completely off topic:

When reading blocked quotes like above, the iphone browser farts and cuts off the text at the right-most ending. I notice it only happens with the <code> construct, which is used regularly here.

Any ideas how to fix it on my end?

2-finger scroll.

The <pre><code> blocks are supposed to be displayed as-is by the browser, so if they don't fit in the current view, they need to scroll.

They don't need a technical enforcement mechanism. Their enforcement is a pack of license auditors sent into your company to verify compliance.

I always thought Oracle's enforcement mechanism was to leave ORA-00600 (internal error) exceptions scattered in various code paths throughout the database. In which case you need to contact support for their workaround, and for the support you need the license.

Should start your comments "Currently not wearing a tinfoil hat..."

The commercial option specifically mentioned in this patch is "Java Flight Recorder" which I think refers to features of the proprietary JRockit JVM that Sun/Oracle had planned to make more freely available through OpenJDK into the Java 8 release http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JRockit