4 ms·

For a time I really idolised Larry Ellison. Then I saw a documentary on Oracle early years and someone said - "There was no Oralce v1, as Ellison, "knew no one

For a time I really idolised Larry Ellison. Then I saw a documentary on Oracle early years and someone said - "There was no Oralce v1, as Ellison, "knew no one would want to buy version 1". This sounded both stupid and an urban legend. Till I checked the Wikipedia entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Database#Releases_and_versions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Database#Releases_and... It not only changed my perspective of the man but also the company. One can know a lot about a company's practices from the way it was founded. Now there is nothing about Oracle which surprises me any more.

smitherfield 9y ago
>There was no Oralce v1, as Ellison, "knew no one would want to buy version 1" Of the "bad Larry Ellison" anecdotes ITT, most of which do paint him in a very bad light, this one doesn't offend me at all; more like smart marketing advice you can use.
- gkya 9y ago
  That's a very bad marketing advice. In case someone finds out what you've done, it's a red cross mark on your brand.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    "Version 1 was internal and not good enough, we waited until version 2 to start selling"? I don't see the issue.
  - smitherfield 9y ago
    It's no different from pricing your product at $9.99/month instead of $10/month, or $9.99/month instead of $119.88/year. Or more pertinent, marketing Java 1.8 as Java 8, selling products with random alphanumeric names like "A-Series 7340X", retroactively renumbering previous software versions, or going straight from Windows 8 to Windows 10. Software version schemes are often started at 0, or other times 1, so why not any other integer? I don't expect software version numbers to mean anything except that higher is (probably) chronologically later. That said I would probably still start numbering internal/beta versions at 1 or 0 and use 2 for the first release. It's not even in the same league of dishonesty as ubiquitous practices by blue-chip tech companies such as using trial pricing in advertisements, selling "new versions" of software with only trivial changes, selling "extended warranties" on hardware that don't cover the most common causes of breakage, or claiming customers have access to "expertise" developing intelligent zero-downtime SaaS solutions on the blockchain with the deep learning algorithms powering our global AR/VR-enabled IoT cloud.
  - hanspeter 9y ago
    Both Apple and MS has skipped product numbers recently and people think of it as nothing more than a curiosity.
kstrauser 9y ago
> For a time I really idolised Larry Ellison. I'm so sorry. I don't think he's literally Satan, because from what I can tell Satan has some principles.
- JetSpiegel 9y ago
  Satan was an angel once. Larry Ellison was just born that way.

smitherfield 9y ago

>There was no Oralce v1, as Ellison, "knew no one would want to buy version 1" Of the "bad Larry Ellison" anecdotes ITT, most of which do paint him in a very bad light, this one doesn't offend me at all; more like smart marketing advice you can use.

gkya 9y ago
That's a very bad marketing advice. In case someone finds out what you've done, it's a red cross mark on your brand.
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  "Version 1 was internal and not good enough, we waited until version 2 to start selling"? I don't see the issue.
- smitherfield 9y ago
  It's no different from pricing your product at $9.99/month instead of $10/month, or $9.99/month instead of $119.88/year. Or more pertinent, marketing Java 1.8 as Java 8, selling products with random alphanumeric names like "A-Series 7340X", retroactively renumbering previous software versions, or going straight from Windows 8 to Windows 10. Software version schemes are often started at 0, or other times 1, so why not any other integer? I don't expect software version numbers to mean anything except that higher is (probably) chronologically later. That said I would probably still start numbering internal/beta versions at 1 or 0 and use 2 for the first release. It's not even in the same league of dishonesty as ubiquitous practices by blue-chip tech companies such as using trial pricing in advertisements, selling "new versions" of software with only trivial changes, selling "extended warranties" on hardware that don't cover the most common causes of breakage, or claiming customers have access to "expertise" developing intelligent zero-downtime SaaS solutions on the blockchain with the deep learning algorithms powering our global AR/VR-enabled IoT cloud.
- hanspeter 9y ago
  Both Apple and MS has skipped product numbers recently and people think of it as nothing more than a curiosity.

kstrauser 9y ago

> For a time I really idolised Larry Ellison. I'm so sorry. I don't think he's literally Satan, because from what I can tell Satan has some principles.

JetSpiegel 9y ago
Satan was an angel once. Larry Ellison was just born that way.