Coldfusion and Docker Licensing

[countofmontepython]

The license at http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/legal/licenses-terms/pdf/ColdFusion-2016.pdf​ pointed me to Adobe - ColdFusion 10 for licensing questions, which simply says "Send a mail to adobecoldfusion@adobe.com for all the queries with respect to licensing".  However, when I sent a message to that address, I got a bounce saying that "adobecoldfusion wasn't found at adobe.com".  When I tried to open a ticket at Adobe ColdFusion Learn & Support, I got "If Adobe ColdFusion is owned by your company or organization, you won’t see it listed under your Adobe ID. Chat with Adobe Customer Care", but when I clicked "Chat with Adobe Customer Care", I got "Chat is currently unavailable. Please contact us during our business hours. If you receive this message during business hours, please try again" (it's currently 8:26 PST).  I guess community support is my only option .

My question is about licensing for Docker.  My assumption is that we have Enterprise licensing, and my understanding is that with that license we can install Coldfusion on a physical/virtual machine with up to 8 cores.  With Docker, there are a few scenarios I am interested in:

1. A single instance running in a container on a virtual host (VM) with <=8 cores
2. A single instance running in a container on a VM with >8 cores (ex. 9 cores), but restricted to 8 cores via Docker CPU scheduling
3. A single instance running in a container that can migrate/float between multiple VMs (ex. 3 VMs), each with <=8 cores or restricted to 8 cores via scheduling
4. A Coldfusion cluster running in containers on a single VM with <=8 cores
5. 3 distinct Coldfusion clusters running in containers that are allowed to migrate/float between 3 Enterprise licensed VM’s, each VM with <=8 cores or each cluster restricted to <=8 cores

The last scenario is the one I am most interested in.  If anyone has any thoughts, I'd appreciate your perspective, especially if you are already doing something like this or if you are even just running containers in production.  Unfortunately, without an official response from Adobe, I will have to assume that anything beyond using Docker to run the process on a single host with <=8 cores will not be possible.

All of this (support & licensing situation) is definitely leaning me and my team closer to Lucee for future development.

[Dave Watts]

Honestly, I would take this right to Rakshith Nareth or Kishore Balakrishnan. I don't know their email addresses offhand, but most Adobe employes are {firstname}@adobe.com. You are not going to get a satisfactory answer from the regular customer support channel. And my guess is that if you ask two different support people at Adobe you're going to get two different answers. Licensing is just very complicated in a world of virtualization and containers. My recommendation would be to get a response from one of them based on your scenarios.

My read of the EULA is that a Docker container would actually count as a VM as described in 1.21. The EULA doesn't really differentiate between one level of virtualization and another. But I am not a lawyer, and unfortunately EULAs are drawn up by lawyers who often don't understand all of the technical complexity involved with virtualization.

That said, I also expect that the next version of CF will explicitly describe Docker/Kubernetes in its EULA, and that Adobe understands that they need to make licensing both easier and more expansive. My experience has been that they want the licensing to be reasonable, and they're not taking an Oracle-style approach where they just squeeze every penny out of you.

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software