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Oracle Tells White House: Stop Hiring Silicon Valley People and Ditch Open Source

185 points by davidgerard 9y ago

kstrauser 9y ago
While I have my opinions on Oracle, I don't have any insight into their corporate health. Were I an investor, though, things like this would alarm me greatly. It comes across very much like "we can no longer compete on any remotely level playing field and need the law to prop us up." Coupled with statements about their cloud services that are outright delusional (for example, http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-on-oracle-cloud-and-amazon-web-services-2016-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-on-oracle-cloud...), I get the impression that they're struggling mightily. What's the mood really like inside Oracle these days?
- ProAm 9y ago
  > "we can no longer compete on any remotely level playing field and need the law to prop us up" That is a huge assumption. In reality they are just positioning themselves, they are a business and government contracts are always extremely juicy and profitable. Oracle is just after the $$.
  - FilterSweep 9y ago
    A huge assumption, yes, but the article backs it up with its source article which maintains that Oracle is failing to hit earnings targets due to the influence of Open Source competition [0] For me, I would feasibly agree that their comments are good positioning, however the vehement attack on Open Source, in particular, sounds more like the canary in the coal mine. [0] http://www.techrepublic.com/article/oracles-rising-open-source-problem/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/oracles-rising-open-sour...
    - AndyNemmity 9y ago
      Does it back it up? That article, cites another article, which cites another article, all saying they are opinions. The last is behind a paywall. I mean, I agree with the argument that there's an impact, but that isn't a citation for it.
    - ProAm 9y ago
      They are worried about share price and what to speak to at their quarterly meetings (See their recent push for cloud revenue), they are still making a LOT of money. They are merely courting government with this plea. They are one of the largest tech companies in the world so gov will listen to their 'expert' advice (whether it be true or just good for their bottom line) and sign contracts because of it. Sort of like IBM these days. Open source has a long way to go to really be a threat to Oracle. But if you are going to paint a bad guy, open source might as well be it, who is going to argue on their behalf to the government and get a ear that will listen?
- AndyNemmity 9y ago
  I don't get that impression all, they sell government software. It's in their interest to do the best to position that software. As an investor, I'd be concerned if they weren't doing this.
  - sbov 9y ago
    The comments from all other companies are here: https://github.com/GSA/modernization/issues https://github.com/GSA/modernization/issues Read a few of them. None of them I've sampled are as aggressive, towards promoting themselves and denigrating other solutions, as Oracle's was.
    - AndyNemmity 9y ago
      Fantastic reading, thanks for adding legitimate detail to the discussion. The tone is very different as you noted.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Clubber 9y ago
  It's difficult to compete with free, even if (and I'm not saying it is) the free version is substandard. I'm sure the federal government is budget conscious with the current administration.
  - eduren 9y ago
    What I worry about is whether their "budgetary consciousness" can outweigh lobbying efforts by contractors. If there's one thing this administration loves, it's big deals with big companies. That's what gets the headlines.
  - banku_brougham 9y ago
    This was very amusing to read. I dont detect any sarcasm. I'll posit a non-partisan and opposite view: the federal government is not budget conscious under any administration.
    - gph 9y ago
      Oh their conscious alright... conscious that they want to add more for everything their side supports while cutting everything the other side supports. Of course after all the political theater this usually ends up with them adding what they want but getting blocked at cutting anything.
  - cosinetau 9y ago
    I don't think that's the case at all. I would expect more quid pro quo out of the current administration, especially if Oracle could paint Silicon Valley as a "leftist wasteland," which it probably already believes.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > I'm sure the federal government is budget conscious with the current administration. Based on...what? Certainly, the current administration is opposed to much of the non-defense, non-criminal-law-enforcement function of the federal government, and eager to cite budget concerns in that context, but I don't see much evidence that it is generally budget conscious beyond that.
- davidgerard 9y ago
  yeah, this read to me like Oracle's "Postgres Marketing Department" springing into action once more.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- bufordsharkley 9y ago
  > "we can no longer compete on any remotely level playing field" Competing on level playing fields results in efficient markets, which asymptotically trends towards profits going to zero. Investors don't want honest competition, they want exploitable privilege.
  - Yhippa 9y ago
    Intuit's Quicken tax software comes to mind.
- thisisit 9y ago
  We use on-prem Oracle stuff but had to evaluate the Oracle Cloud versions recently. I can't speak for how they stack up against AWS. But they couldn't even compare with the on-prem versions. Cloud versions were very different and nearly alien to the users of the on-prem versions. Not to mention the huge downtimes, they wanted nearly 12 hours every alternate weekend. The cost difference was lower for cloud but finally the company opted for on-prem versions. That said, as an investor, I doubt someone would look this as negative as "we can no longer compete on any remotely level playing field and need the law to prop us up." Given my limited knowledge of Oracle and Larry Ellison's marketing tactic, this would just be in a long line of marketing speak trying to portray everything non-Oracle in bad light. If White House follows up on the marketing speak, they get a lot of government contracts and makes a lot of money. This is good for me as a shareholder. What would concern me, again with limited knowledge of Ellison and Oracle, is if they just rolled over and played dead and pretended that OSS and SV were not a threat to their business. That as an investor would send the alarm bells ringing.
joatmon-snoo 9y ago
THE LAWNMOWER STRIKES AGAIN
mrweasel 9y ago
Without Open Source software what are they recommend running Oracle software on, now that they practically killed of Solaris? Oracle on Windows?
- yellowapple 9y ago
  Oracle still has its own RHEL-based Linux distro last I checked. It'd probably just keep peddling that.
wmf 9y ago
Discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008
lloydde 9y ago
Relevant discussion from yesterday on source Oracle letter https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008
jasonmp85 9y ago
Yes, clearly Oracle should get all the contracts… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon#Website_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon#Website_failure
- banku_brougham 9y ago
  That's an amazing bit of history.
- selimthegrim 9y ago
  Oracle was hiring anyone with a BS to manage their programmers towards the end of that - no technical experience required.
fusiongyro 9y ago
How likely is this message to be taken seriously?
- sidlls 9y ago
  Hopefully, for the part about stop hiring from SV, very seriously. I would prefer government systems be engineered by people who don't think engineering is just a glorified senior CS project.
  - afinlayson 9y ago
    Yes, cause what we need in Washington is a bunch of people who don't know how to fix a problem like an engineer. If you don't want the smartest, most educated people, who would you like? I'm serious ... cause the people running the show at the moment are useless.
    - yellowapple 9y ago
      There are plenty of excellent programmers outside of the Bay Area.
      - sidlls 9y ago
        Many of them much better than what can be found here.
        cycrutchfield 9y ago
        LOL, you are pathetic. Insecure much?
        sctb 9y ago
        Please stop these personal attacks; they'll get your account banned. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
the_common_man 9y ago
I will be a contrarian but why is this a big deal? Most of the startup I know use: * Gmail, Google apps * Dropbox * Slack * GitHub * Zendesk, Intercom, Salesforce or whatever All of them are closed source. There is a lot of truth in the fact that one can only 'rely' on closed source products for non-infrastructure software. Only developers use open source products as such. Happy to be given counter examples.
- eduren 9y ago
  While I do see the point you're making, I would like to counter by saying that every product you listed likely is built with open-source components. Oracle doesn't want to compete with Slack, it wants Slack (and others) to be on Oracle cloud/databases.
  - peapicker 9y ago
    Ummm, Oracle isn't competing with Slack, Oracle is paying Slack -- because Oracle is a Slack user... and Slack runs on AWS... ( https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/slack/ https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/slack/ ) See the logos under "More companies who love Slack" on the page: https://slack.com/customer-stories https://slack.com/customer-stories
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  The long-term problem for Oracle is none of the startups are using Oracle.
- bdamm 9y ago
  Open source is by its definition a product for developers. Developers make it useful to customers. It makes no sense to then claim this as a reason why the US Government shouldn't use or rely on open source. The US Government is large enough that if it were a company it would have major in-house developer cost centers.
  - lloydde 9y ago
    > Open source is by its definition a product for developers That’s like saying a (mechanical) car by definition is a product for mechanics. Firefox.
Top19 9y ago
Worked at Oracle for 6 years. IMO the company is incredibly authentic. Cares about a lot about making money for Larry, doesn’t care that much about the customer, etc. Always had this “you always know where they stand feel”. It’s kind of sad that today these are how good traits after years of “be authentic!” and “find your passion” sermons. Contrast this will the duopoly of Facebook and Google. Robbing the world blind while also wanting credit to be the “good guys” and who totally “aren’t evil”. FWIW Oracle employs 150,000 people at about a 150 B market cap. Facebook employs 17,000 people at a 450 B market cap. Oracle is bad in many ways, but it’s slowness and inefficiency does not represent a threat to global democracy and stability like Google and Facebook do. ALSO: Oracle has hired about 15,000 liberal arts graduates over the last 4 years as part of their “Class Of” program. Many of these people, and I worked with them, would not be in the middle-class today if it weren’t for Oracle considering their degrees/background. Program has had mixed success, but in a time when all companies either want a CS degree of 3-5 years work experience, I’ve never forgotten what an opportunity Oracle offered those people.
- deadmetheny 9y ago
  Don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, indeed[1]. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m04s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m04s
- selimthegrim 9y ago
  Those liberal arts graduates were part of running the Cover Oregon project into the ground. I know. I met them.
  - tc7 9y ago
    Tangential: I just read the wikipedia page on this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon#Website_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon#Website_failure]. Is there any more in-depth information available about what went wrong on this project (or others like it)? I'd love to read a post-mortem, or some technical explanation of what goes wrong on projects like these. Does the code just not work? Is everyone purposely just billing time and milking the contract, or does it start with competent analysts and developers trying to deliver working software? And if so, how does it get from there to here? Is this a typical gov contract thing that I've just not seen by working private sector? If anyone has any resources on this sort of thing, I'd love to see them.
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
Larry Ellisons Finances must be taking a hit.
Crontab 9y ago
Fuck I hate Oracle. I hope the whole thing burns.
- sctb 9y ago
  This is not on topic for Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
bdamm 9y ago
A sign of a company in the early throes of death. If Oracle really wants to compete it would start by reducing the prices of its commodity products.
- jiggliemon 9y ago
  The commodity products are cheaper than the competition.
  - bdamm 9y ago
    Only if you consider MySQL an Oracle product. But I don't think that's really where their making their money.
jondubois 9y ago
Over the past 15 years as a software engineer I haven't used any Oracle product... Except maybe Java and MySQL; but that was mostly before they were bought by Oracle. Oracle is a company whose survival is based almost entirely on its legacy software and deep ties to government. It's surprising that their stock price has been going up over the past 10 years. The government would definitely function better if it started using open source software. For a long time, big companies like Microsoft and Oracle would spread lies about open source; claiming that it is inherently inferior to commercial software - Yet if you look at the vast majority of tech unicorns these days, practically all of them use open source software at their core. The proof that open source is superior is not hard to find and yet it seems that companies like Oracle are still playing the same old game of trying to fudge the facts. I'm worried that the next wave of propaganda will be around cloud services. Big companies like Amazon will get their hooks into government and start spreading lies about how cloud services are better than open source containerized/orchestrated solutions... Then after 20 years this will again be proven to have been a lie... And the cycle of deceptive lobbying will repeat.
- astockwell 9y ago
  Not to worry, the aging executives in big corps/government are already well entrenched in the belief that "all of AWS is insecure ... because remember company xyz got breached on AWS..." referring of course to someone putting user data in public, unsecured S3 buckets. Will be a while yet before they start eating the lunch that cloud providers are peddling.
  - samfriedman 9y ago
    Actually, AWS offers a government-targeted region specifically to address data escape concerns [0]. Not classified-secure, but fine for ITAR stuff. Definitely not something I expected to exist. [0] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/latest/UserGuide/whatis.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/latest/UserGuide/what...
    - astockwell 9y ago
amorphid 9y ago
Once you ditch all your open source, you run your Oracle software in the cloud. And by cloud, Larry Ellison means that physical Oracle appliance attached to a network in your data center. [1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170328233007/https://www.forbes.com/2009/09/22/oracle-zander-sun-intelligent-technology-ellison.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170328233007/https://www.forbe...
gleenn 9y ago
TFA mentions 18F and USDS as initiatives to get more tech savvy people into gov roles. I also wanted to point out Code for America which does things in very much the same vein: get talented engineers and product folks into government funded software projects for the betterment of everyone. They're an awesome group of dedicated people too!
cwkoss 9y ago
Short Oracle. Dying company with outdated tech and business plan. They haven't created real value in a decade.
- thyrsus 9y ago
  "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." The only shorts for which I've ever been rich enough are in clothing stores - and my comforts extend beyond my clothing.
  - cwkoss 9y ago
    $48.91 today, lets see how well my comment ages :-D

185 points by davidgerard 9y ago

While I have my opinions on Oracle, I don't have any insight into their corporate health. Were I an investor, though, things like this would alarm me greatly. It comes across very much like "we can no longer compete on any remotely level playing field and need the law to prop us up." Coupled with statements about their cloud services that are outright delusional (for example, http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-on-oracle-cloud-and-amazon-web-services-2016-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-on-oracle-cloud...), I get the impression that they're struggling mightily. What's the mood really like inside Oracle these days?

ProAm 9y ago
> "we can no longer compete on any remotely level playing field and need the law to prop us up" That is a huge assumption. In reality they are just positioning themselves, they are a business and government contracts are always extremely juicy and profitable. Oracle is just after the $$.
- FilterSweep 9y ago
  A huge assumption, yes, but the article backs it up with its source article which maintains that Oracle is failing to hit earnings targets due to the influence of Open Source competition [0] For me, I would feasibly agree that their comments are good positioning, however the vehement attack on Open Source, in particular, sounds more like the canary in the coal mine. [0] http://www.techrepublic.com/article/oracles-rising-open-source-problem/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/oracles-rising-open-sour...
  - AndyNemmity 9y ago
    Does it back it up? That article, cites another article, which cites another article, all saying they are opinions. The last is behind a paywall. I mean, I agree with the argument that there's an impact, but that isn't a citation for it.
  - ProAm 9y ago
    They are worried about share price and what to speak to at their quarterly meetings (See their recent push for cloud revenue), they are still making a LOT of money. They are merely courting government with this plea. They are one of the largest tech companies in the world so gov will listen to their 'expert' advice (whether it be true or just good for their bottom line) and sign contracts because of it. Sort of like IBM these days. Open source has a long way to go to really be a threat to Oracle. But if you are going to paint a bad guy, open source might as well be it, who is going to argue on their behalf to the government and get a ear that will listen?
AndyNemmity 9y ago
I don't get that impression all, they sell government software. It's in their interest to do the best to position that software. As an investor, I'd be concerned if they weren't doing this.
- sbov 9y ago
  The comments from all other companies are here: https://github.com/GSA/modernization/issues https://github.com/GSA/modernization/issues Read a few of them. None of them I've sampled are as aggressive, towards promoting themselves and denigrating other solutions, as Oracle's was.
  - AndyNemmity 9y ago
    Fantastic reading, thanks for adding legitimate detail to the discussion. The tone is very different as you noted.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Clubber 9y ago
It's difficult to compete with free, even if (and I'm not saying it is) the free version is substandard. I'm sure the federal government is budget conscious with the current administration.
- eduren 9y ago
  What I worry about is whether their "budgetary consciousness" can outweigh lobbying efforts by contractors. If there's one thing this administration loves, it's big deals with big companies. That's what gets the headlines.
- banku_brougham 9y ago
  This was very amusing to read. I dont detect any sarcasm. I'll posit a non-partisan and opposite view: the federal government is not budget conscious under any administration.
  - gph 9y ago
    Oh their conscious alright... conscious that they want to add more for everything their side supports while cutting everything the other side supports. Of course after all the political theater this usually ends up with them adding what they want but getting blocked at cutting anything.
- cosinetau 9y ago
  I don't think that's the case at all. I would expect more quid pro quo out of the current administration, especially if Oracle could paint Silicon Valley as a "leftist wasteland," which it probably already believes.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > I'm sure the federal government is budget conscious with the current administration. Based on...what? Certainly, the current administration is opposed to much of the non-defense, non-criminal-law-enforcement function of the federal government, and eager to cite budget concerns in that context, but I don't see much evidence that it is generally budget conscious beyond that.
davidgerard 9y ago
yeah, this read to me like Oracle's "Postgres Marketing Department" springing into action once more.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bufordsharkley 9y ago
> "we can no longer compete on any remotely level playing field" Competing on level playing fields results in efficient markets, which asymptotically trends towards profits going to zero. Investors don't want honest competition, they want exploitable privilege.
- Yhippa 9y ago
  Intuit's Quicken tax software comes to mind.
thisisit 9y ago
We use on-prem Oracle stuff but had to evaluate the Oracle Cloud versions recently. I can't speak for how they stack up against AWS. But they couldn't even compare with the on-prem versions. Cloud versions were very different and nearly alien to the users of the on-prem versions. Not to mention the huge downtimes, they wanted nearly 12 hours every alternate weekend. The cost difference was lower for cloud but finally the company opted for on-prem versions. That said, as an investor, I doubt someone would look this as negative as "we can no longer compete on any remotely level playing field and need the law to prop us up." Given my limited knowledge of Oracle and Larry Ellison's marketing tactic, this would just be in a long line of marketing speak trying to portray everything non-Oracle in bad light. If White House follows up on the marketing speak, they get a lot of government contracts and makes a lot of money. This is good for me as a shareholder. What would concern me, again with limited knowledge of Ellison and Oracle, is if they just rolled over and played dead and pretended that OSS and SV were not a threat to their business. That as an investor would send the alarm bells ringing.

joatmon-snoo 9y ago

THE LAWNMOWER STRIKES AGAIN

mrweasel 9y ago

Without Open Source software what are they recommend running Oracle software on, now that they practically killed of Solaris? Oracle on Windows?

yellowapple 9y ago
Oracle still has its own RHEL-based Linux distro last I checked. It'd probably just keep peddling that.

wmf 9y ago

Discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008

lloydde 9y ago

Relevant discussion from yesterday on source Oracle letter https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008

jasonmp85 9y ago

Yes, clearly Oracle should get all the contracts… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon#Website_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon#Website_failure

banku_brougham 9y ago
That's an amazing bit of history.
selimthegrim 9y ago
Oracle was hiring anyone with a BS to manage their programmers towards the end of that - no technical experience required.

fusiongyro 9y ago

How likely is this message to be taken seriously?

sidlls 9y ago
Hopefully, for the part about stop hiring from SV, very seriously. I would prefer government systems be engineered by people who don't think engineering is just a glorified senior CS project.
- afinlayson 9y ago
  Yes, cause what we need in Washington is a bunch of people who don't know how to fix a problem like an engineer. If you don't want the smartest, most educated people, who would you like? I'm serious ... cause the people running the show at the moment are useless.
  - yellowapple 9y ago
    There are plenty of excellent programmers outside of the Bay Area.
    - sidlls 9y ago
      Many of them much better than what can be found here.
      - cycrutchfield 9y ago
        LOL, you are pathetic. Insecure much?
        sctb 9y ago
        Please stop these personal attacks; they'll get your account banned. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

the_common_man 9y ago

I will be a contrarian but why is this a big deal? Most of the startup I know use: * Gmail, Google apps * Dropbox * Slack * GitHub * Zendesk, Intercom, Salesforce or whatever All of them are closed source. There is a lot of truth in the fact that one can only 'rely' on closed source products for non-infrastructure software. Only developers use open source products as such. Happy to be given counter examples.

eduren 9y ago
While I do see the point you're making, I would like to counter by saying that every product you listed likely is built with open-source components. Oracle doesn't want to compete with Slack, it wants Slack (and others) to be on Oracle cloud/databases.
- peapicker 9y ago
  Ummm, Oracle isn't competing with Slack, Oracle is paying Slack -- because Oracle is a Slack user... and Slack runs on AWS... ( https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/slack/ https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/slack/ ) See the logos under "More companies who love Slack" on the page: https://slack.com/customer-stories https://slack.com/customer-stories
tonyedgecombe 9y ago
The long-term problem for Oracle is none of the startups are using Oracle.
bdamm 9y ago
Open source is by its definition a product for developers. Developers make it useful to customers. It makes no sense to then claim this as a reason why the US Government shouldn't use or rely on open source. The US Government is large enough that if it were a company it would have major in-house developer cost centers.
- lloydde 9y ago
  > Open source is by its definition a product for developers That’s like saying a (mechanical) car by definition is a product for mechanics. Firefox.

Top19 9y ago

Worked at Oracle for 6 years. IMO the company is incredibly authentic. Cares about a lot about making money for Larry, doesn’t care that much about the customer, etc. Always had this “you always know where they stand feel”. It’s kind of sad that today these are how good traits after years of “be authentic!” and “find your passion” sermons. Contrast this will the duopoly of Facebook and Google. Robbing the world blind while also wanting credit to be the “good guys” and who totally “aren’t evil”. FWIW Oracle employs 150,000 people at about a 150 B market cap. Facebook employs 17,000 people at a 450 B market cap. Oracle is bad in many ways, but it’s slowness and inefficiency does not represent a threat to global democracy and stability like Google and Facebook do. ALSO: Oracle has hired about 15,000 liberal arts graduates over the last 4 years as part of their “Class Of” program. Many of these people, and I worked with them, would not be in the middle-class today if it weren’t for Oracle considering their degrees/background. Program has had mixed success, but in a time when all companies either want a CS degree of 3-5 years work experience, I’ve never forgotten what an opportunity Oracle offered those people.

deadmetheny 9y ago
Don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, indeed[1]. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m04s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m04s
selimthegrim 9y ago
Those liberal arts graduates were part of running the Cover Oregon project into the ground. I know. I met them.
- tc7 9y ago
  Tangential: I just read the wikipedia page on this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon#Website_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon#Website_failure]. Is there any more in-depth information available about what went wrong on this project (or others like it)? I'd love to read a post-mortem, or some technical explanation of what goes wrong on projects like these. Does the code just not work? Is everyone purposely just billing time and milking the contract, or does it start with competent analysts and developers trying to deliver working software? And if so, how does it get from there to here? Is this a typical gov contract thing that I've just not seen by working private sector? If anyone has any resources on this sort of thing, I'd love to see them.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

Larry Ellisons Finances must be taking a hit.

Crontab 9y ago

Fuck I hate Oracle. I hope the whole thing burns.

sctb 9y ago
This is not on topic for Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

bdamm 9y ago

A sign of a company in the early throes of death. If Oracle really wants to compete it would start by reducing the prices of its commodity products.

jiggliemon 9y ago
The commodity products are cheaper than the competition.
- bdamm 9y ago
  Only if you consider MySQL an Oracle product. But I don't think that's really where their making their money.

jondubois 9y ago

Over the past 15 years as a software engineer I haven't used any Oracle product... Except maybe Java and MySQL; but that was mostly before they were bought by Oracle. Oracle is a company whose survival is based almost entirely on its legacy software and deep ties to government. It's surprising that their stock price has been going up over the past 10 years. The government would definitely function better if it started using open source software. For a long time, big companies like Microsoft and Oracle would spread lies about open source; claiming that it is inherently inferior to commercial software - Yet if you look at the vast majority of tech unicorns these days, practically all of them use open source software at their core. The proof that open source is superior is not hard to find and yet it seems that companies like Oracle are still playing the same old game of trying to fudge the facts. I'm worried that the next wave of propaganda will be around cloud services. Big companies like Amazon will get their hooks into government and start spreading lies about how cloud services are better than open source containerized/orchestrated solutions... Then after 20 years this will again be proven to have been a lie... And the cycle of deceptive lobbying will repeat.

astockwell 9y ago
Not to worry, the aging executives in big corps/government are already well entrenched in the belief that "all of AWS is insecure ... because remember company xyz got breached on AWS..." referring of course to someone putting user data in public, unsecured S3 buckets. Will be a while yet before they start eating the lunch that cloud providers are peddling.
- samfriedman 9y ago
  Actually, AWS offers a government-targeted region specifically to address data escape concerns [0]. Not classified-secure, but fine for ITAR stuff. Definitely not something I expected to exist. [0] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/latest/UserGuide/whatis.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/latest/UserGuide/what...
  - astockwell 9y ago

amorphid 9y ago

Once you ditch all your open source, you run your Oracle software in the cloud. And by cloud, Larry Ellison means that physical Oracle appliance attached to a network in your data center. [1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170328233007/https://www.forbes.com/2009/09/22/oracle-zander-sun-intelligent-technology-ellison.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170328233007/https://www.forbe...

gleenn 9y ago

TFA mentions 18F and USDS as initiatives to get more tech savvy people into gov roles. I also wanted to point out Code for America which does things in very much the same vein: get talented engineers and product folks into government funded software projects for the betterment of everyone. They're an awesome group of dedicated people too!

cwkoss 9y ago

Short Oracle. Dying company with outdated tech and business plan. They haven't created real value in a decade.

thyrsus 9y ago
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." The only shorts for which I've ever been rich enough are in clothing stores - and my comforts extend beyond my clothing.
- cwkoss 9y ago
  $48.91 today, lets see how well my comment ages :-D