3 ms·

Can Oracle/Microsoft actually enforce "no benchmark clauses," as in could they take you to court and win?

• adrianN 9y ago
  Do you want to fight a corporation with endless money for lawyers in court?
  • trgv 9y ago
    No, of course not. But I'm still interested in what a court would ultimately decide and whether anyone has actually been taken to court over this.
• pimmen 9y ago
  I suspect not, you should be covered by the first amendment. However, I don't think most people have the money to find out. The ones that do seem keen on following Ellison's example.
  • anon62343 9y ago
    The first amendment doesn't apply to contracts between private entities. The government cannot forbid you to publish benchmarks. However, it can also not prevent you from signing away your first amendment rights in most circumstances.
  • wl 9y ago
    The first amendment only protects you against the government. NDA clauses in contracts hold up in court all the time.
• brightball 9y ago
  There’s a reddit thread benchmarking SQL Server vs Postgres where the all named references had to be removed IIRC. Edit: here https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2mhpwp/postgresql_vs_ms_sql_server_a_comparison_of_two/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2mhpwp/postgre...
  • tedunangst 9y ago
    > Edit: I'm told this proprietary database vendor dislikes users publishing benchmark results comparing their software to F/OSS databases. I'd argue that this is more of an anecdote than a benchmark; but just in case I edited the comment to remove the vendor and product name from the parts that talk about performance. That doesn't really sound like they were forced to do anything.
• user5994461 9y ago
  The answer is that it is impossible to know. I don't recall any case ever being taken to court up to the end. We can't know the result if there is no precedent.