I guess the license was so expensive that no one would have installed it on 1000 servers.

Assuming each server was 4 cores, that's 4000 processors. So you get their bargain $15/month/core pricing versus the base $25/month/core pricing.

Your monthly bill would be $60k. Presumably you would negotiate some additional discount, but still...ouch.

https://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/price-lists/java...

The thing that killed most folks was the virtualized machines. They price on host, not guest OS. Got a 4 core virtual machine on a 128 core host... 128 cores need to be licensed. Those small web apps became crazy expensive where physical hardware is discouraged.

When lawyers come before engineering, that's what you get.