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>I, personally, wouldn't work anywhere where I couldn't contribute to Open Source communities at least part of my work day. With respect I don't think that the

by r2dnb 10y ago

>I, personally, wouldn't work anywhere where I couldn't contribute to Open Source communities at least part of my work day. With respect I don't think that the gist of your post is solid, you seem to forget that Microsoft has no problem whatsoever to attract good developers. They could even afford to turn down someone as talented as the creator of Mono. What developers - like other employees - look at is the corporate package, and - sometimes - the company's mission. This is why Oracle still has employees.

SwellJoe 10y ago
"This is why Oracle still has employees." That's not a very high bar, is it? "Has employees"...well, so does Walmart. Does Oracle have the kind of engineering talent and passion that will see them through future decades as a market leader? I believe we've seen a shift that won't revert. And, I believe Oracle has only a long slow decline ahead of them. Microsoft, on the other hand, may have averted that fate. This is not to say that Open Source is magic (companies still have to ring the cash register), or that engineers are in charge of the ship now (though that, too, has been happening). I just think we live in a different world from the one where Microsoft and Oracle rose to dominant positions. Would you want to work at Oracle? More importantly, would you prefer to work at Oracle over, say, Google or Github? Oracle has always been, and remains, anti-OSS. They sue over Java APIs, they close Solaris development after Sun had opened it, they piss off MySQL developers so much that they leave the company and fork MariaDB, they piss of Hudson developers leading to Jenkins fork, OpenOffice forked into Libre Office, etc. The best developers hate working with Oracle. The same was once true of Microsoft; at least it applied to many Microsoft products. I think that means something. It's not a simple equation, but if I were betting on companies that will stand the test of time, I'd bet on the ones that have deep company loyalty (both inside and outside) and have passionate people who want to be involved in what the company is doing.
- PeCaN 10y ago
  Eh. Oracle has a huge amount of engineering talent in certain areas (i.e. the database and SPARC). It would be pretty fun to work on the database I imagine. I would personally never be able to bring myself to work there, but maybe working on a decent team + good money could still attract talent.

by r2dnb 10y ago

SwellJoe 10y ago

"This is why Oracle still has employees." That's not a very high bar, is it? "Has employees"...well, so does Walmart. Does Oracle have the kind of engineering talent and passion that will see them through future decades as a market leader? I believe we've seen a shift that won't revert. And, I believe Oracle has only a long slow decline ahead of them. Microsoft, on the other hand, may have averted that fate. This is not to say that Open Source is magic (companies still have to ring the cash register), or that engineers are in charge of the ship now (though that, too, has been happening). I just think we live in a different world from the one where Microsoft and Oracle rose to dominant positions. Would you want to work at Oracle? More importantly, would you prefer to work at Oracle over, say, Google or Github? Oracle has always been, and remains, anti-OSS. They sue over Java APIs, they close Solaris development after Sun had opened it, they piss off MySQL developers so much that they leave the company and fork MariaDB, they piss of Hudson developers leading to Jenkins fork, OpenOffice forked into Libre Office, etc. The best developers hate working with Oracle. The same was once true of Microsoft; at least it applied to many Microsoft products. I think that means something. It's not a simple equation, but if I were betting on companies that will stand the test of time, I'd bet on the ones that have deep company loyalty (both inside and outside) and have passionate people who want to be involved in what the company is doing.

PeCaN 10y ago
Eh. Oracle has a huge amount of engineering talent in certain areas (i.e. the database and SPARC). It would be pretty fun to work on the database I imagine. I would personally never be able to bring myself to work there, but maybe working on a decent team + good money could still attract talent.