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I don't think it's the lack of open-source code that is causing the grievances but rather the tone of the blog post and the overall theme of "Our IP is more imp

by jpgvm 11y ago

I don't think it's the lack of open-source code that is causing the grievances but rather the tone of the blog post and the overall theme of "Our IP is more important then your security concerns, no we don't care if you are a core bank". Microsoft, SAP, VMware all have closed source software that is very prevalent in enterprise, often in entrenched positions just like Oracle. Sure they aren't exactly all peaches either but atleast they have a decent way of responding to security problems or plain bugs. They also don't wield their license agreement as a weapon against their customers, they only use it to make sure they get paid.

ZoFreX 11y ago
> Our IP is more important then your security concerns, no we don't care if you are a core bank But that isn't what it says, at all. It even explicitly says that if you do find a security flaw this way they will still fix it. But the main point is that you can't do anything by reverse engineering the source code that they aren't already doing, and doing better than you because they have the actual source code.
jaawn 11y ago
The blog post doesn't make me think of license-agreements-as-a-weapon. Oracle's position is probably the strictest I've seen anyone be in favor of software IP protection. They are not adversarial, they are supremely protectionist (presumably because they think their software is so great that other people want to copy it). That protection (possibly over-protection) is the core of the disagreement, and the source of the article's tone and inherent frustration on both sides. Oracle thinks it is self-evident that protection of their source code is paramount (i.e. as closed source as possible), other people disagree both with their priorities and the very idea of absolutely forbidding any deep analysis of any kind outside of Oracle itself. It still seems like a debate about the degree to which the source code is "closed." For Oracle, it is absolutely closed, while many of their competitors are more lenient (i.e. slightly less "closed".) To be clear, I think Oracle is being silly with their over-sanitized and idealistic views regarding their intellectual property. The other companies you mentioned (Microsoft et al) have much more reasonable approaches and agreements.

by jpgvm 11y ago

ZoFreX 11y ago

> Our IP is more important then your security concerns, no we don't care if you are a core bank But that isn't what it says, at all. It even explicitly says that if you do find a security flaw this way they will still fix it. But the main point is that you can't do anything by reverse engineering the source code that they aren't already doing, and doing better than you because they have the actual source code.

jaawn 11y ago

The blog post doesn't make me think of license-agreements-as-a-weapon. Oracle's position is probably the strictest I've seen anyone be in favor of software IP protection. They are not adversarial, they are supremely protectionist (presumably because they think their software is so great that other people want to copy it). That protection (possibly over-protection) is the core of the disagreement, and the source of the article's tone and inherent frustration on both sides. Oracle thinks it is self-evident that protection of their source code is paramount (i.e. as closed source as possible), other people disagree both with their priorities and the very idea of absolutely forbidding any deep analysis of any kind outside of Oracle itself. It still seems like a debate about the degree to which the source code is "closed." For Oracle, it is absolutely closed, while many of their competitors are more lenient (i.e. slightly less "closed".) To be clear, I think Oracle is being silly with their over-sanitized and idealistic views regarding their intellectual property. The other companies you mentioned (Microsoft et al) have much more reasonable approaches and agreements.