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> Software Development Laboratories implemented it and called it Oracle, and in 1979 sold it to the CIA... I've long suspected that Oracle's success was due to

> Software Development Laboratories implemented it and called it Oracle, and in 1979 sold it to the CIA... I've long suspected that Oracle's success was due to becoming the de facto RDBMS for any and all government TLA's. I think this is part of Ellison's legendary arrogance. He knows he has the US government by the short hairs when it comes to IT. I think it also ties well with Sun CEO Scott McNealy's famous, "You have no privacy; get over it," comment. McNealy understood that the CIA (and NSA, FBI, et. al.) were running big data mining operations -- with Oracle, as that was the only game in town, at that point -- on his hardware, but he couldn't just come out and say that.

gaius 10y ago
That's not exactly how it happened - Oracle got the CIA as a customer specifically because doing so would let them skip the queue for a new mainframe, for which there was a waiting list. It was what kids these days would call a "growth hack". The original "Oracle" was a scheme for storing data on mylar strips, getting into database game was what kids these days would call a "pivot". (Source: Larry Ellison's bio).