5 ms·

Leaving Oracle

64 points by kmavm 16y ago

sgt 16y ago
Speaking of Oracle, that easily leads me to the discussion of OpenSolaris (RIP). Check out www.illumos.org It's is starting to get quite interesting, also check out #illumos on freenode.
- piaskal 16y ago
  I wonder how many patents Oracle has on this one.
DrJokepu 16y ago
I seriously wonder what the Oracle upper management thinks about the recent exodus of their (actually, Sun's) top talent. Do they even notice it? Do they consider it as a problem, or just "getting rid of them ballerinas"? Or maybe they think that they are easily replaceable?
- wmf 16y ago
  If Oracle is seriously planning to "spend more on Solaris than Sun did", they have a lot of hiring to do... just to get back up to parity. At least in Austin it's rumored that Oracle has a net influx of chip designers.
  - KaeseEs 16y ago
    Sun had a ton of chip designers, I'm skeptical quantity was the problem with respect to their SPARC development.
  - hga 16y ago
    Someone reliable said that one of the things happening is that a lot of Sun software engineers had their salaries significantly reduced in the transition. This would suggest that either Oracle plans on having different people work on Solaris (and as you note many of them) or they were lying through their teeth.
  - etherael 16y ago
    Well see, you can spend money on engineers to improve the product, or you can spend money on strippers and steaks to sell the product. Technically, both are "money spent on the product" in some way, shape or form. Oracle are just more likely to throw money at the latter class rather than the former class.
  - steve19 16y ago
    Why does Oracle want to be in the chip design business?
    - hga 16y ago
      Because they want to sell complete systems that provide more power than the x86 ecosystem can?
- mustpax 16y ago
  This has been said before but it's worth repeating, Oracle is not an engineering company. They are giant sales organization with an engineering department tacked on. They probably considered Sun's workforce before the acquisition as a liability instead of as an asset. The assets were in Sun's products, patents and customers. In that calculus, the people who quit willingly just represent severance checks Oracle doesn't have to write.
  - tlack 16y ago
    But won't the products suffer severely once the brains behind them leave? No organization as old and large as Oracle can discount that.
    - rdtsc 16y ago
      What the grandparent post said is correct -- Oracle is a sales company. They sell a seemingly engineering product -- a database. But that doesn't matter. Most organization who buy that database could probably manage with Postgres if they had to (not saying "all", just "most"). So why do they buy it? Because Oracle salesmen play golf well and know how to lose to the right CEO/CIO/CTO person. Yes, Oracle DB is "golfware" not "software". There is a whole ecosystem of training and support that they have built. Keeping that up is worth a lot more than rolling out better software, because that is where the money is coming from. So when the best Sun engineers leave, Oracle managers are probably thinking "good riddance, we could replace them with 10 engineers in India for the same price!" and the sad thing is, -- they are probably correct for the market they are in.
      - sandGorgon 16y ago
        upvoted for "golfware"
      - hga 16y ago
        Thing is, there was a long period in the '90s when Oracle was the best solution, period. Non-mainframe DB2 was by the mid-90s (and perhaps earlier) nice, cheaper and simpler to administer but used conventional locking instead of MVCC (works for a small group of DB engineers but doesn't scale as well with lots of developers), MySQL was a non-ACID nightmare (heck, unless my research was really off in mid-1997 Linux didn't truly impliment fsync back then), PostgresSQL wasn't ready for prime time and the less said about SQLServer the better (it's improved since them or so I'm sold). And small fry like Informix weren't particularly worth dealing with, Ingres was dying, etc. etc. You can see how the above golfware paradigm could easily sink in when you really did have arguably the best solution, even if it cost twice as much as the next best (DB2, who's ecosystem (e.g. books) was and I'm sure still is much less rich). However as you and many others have noted the world is very different now.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- yock 16y ago
  Adam is a seriously talented developer. I had the privilege of meeting him, as I'm sure many have over the last several years, at a Linux conference in Los Angeles a few years ago. His dtrace presentation still sticks out in my mind as a superior demonstration of superior software. Whomever ends up with him on their staff will be better off for it.
  - SkyMarshal 16y ago
    It looks like the Valley is about to get a serious influx of unburdened creativity and talent able to get working on the next big thing. Oracle's loss may well be lots of other companies' (and FOSS in general I hope)'s gain.
- nanairo 16y ago
  I would imagine (or at least I hope) that Oracle was fully aware when they bought Sun that their company philosophy was going to clash with Sun's and they would have lost a lot of bright people. It's a pity, but I don't think it came as a surprise to them.
  - steve19 16y ago
    I think they were well aware of this. The goal of the management is to remove the sun culture and replace it with Oracle culture as soon as possible. The hardcore believers who are leaving simply helps Oracle.
jacquesm 16y ago
The curious part of me was hoping for a reason.
- sprout 16y ago
  I can't imagine what reason there could possibly be.

64 points by kmavm 16y ago

sgt 16y ago

Speaking of Oracle, that easily leads me to the discussion of OpenSolaris (RIP). Check out www.illumos.org It's is starting to get quite interesting, also check out #illumos on freenode.

piaskal 16y ago
I wonder how many patents Oracle has on this one.

DrJokepu 16y ago

I seriously wonder what the Oracle upper management thinks about the recent exodus of their (actually, Sun's) top talent. Do they even notice it? Do they consider it as a problem, or just "getting rid of them ballerinas"? Or maybe they think that they are easily replaceable?

wmf 16y ago
If Oracle is seriously planning to "spend more on Solaris than Sun did", they have a lot of hiring to do... just to get back up to parity. At least in Austin it's rumored that Oracle has a net influx of chip designers.
- KaeseEs 16y ago
  Sun had a ton of chip designers, I'm skeptical quantity was the problem with respect to their SPARC development.
- hga 16y ago
  Someone reliable said that one of the things happening is that a lot of Sun software engineers had their salaries significantly reduced in the transition. This would suggest that either Oracle plans on having different people work on Solaris (and as you note many of them) or they were lying through their teeth.
- etherael 16y ago
  Well see, you can spend money on engineers to improve the product, or you can spend money on strippers and steaks to sell the product. Technically, both are "money spent on the product" in some way, shape or form. Oracle are just more likely to throw money at the latter class rather than the former class.
- steve19 16y ago
  Why does Oracle want to be in the chip design business?
  - hga 16y ago
    Because they want to sell complete systems that provide more power than the x86 ecosystem can?
mustpax 16y ago
This has been said before but it's worth repeating, Oracle is not an engineering company. They are giant sales organization with an engineering department tacked on. They probably considered Sun's workforce before the acquisition as a liability instead of as an asset. The assets were in Sun's products, patents and customers. In that calculus, the people who quit willingly just represent severance checks Oracle doesn't have to write.
- tlack 16y ago
  But won't the products suffer severely once the brains behind them leave? No organization as old and large as Oracle can discount that.
  - rdtsc 16y ago
    What the grandparent post said is correct -- Oracle is a sales company. They sell a seemingly engineering product -- a database. But that doesn't matter. Most organization who buy that database could probably manage with Postgres if they had to (not saying "all", just "most"). So why do they buy it? Because Oracle salesmen play golf well and know how to lose to the right CEO/CIO/CTO person. Yes, Oracle DB is "golfware" not "software". There is a whole ecosystem of training and support that they have built. Keeping that up is worth a lot more than rolling out better software, because that is where the money is coming from. So when the best Sun engineers leave, Oracle managers are probably thinking "good riddance, we could replace them with 10 engineers in India for the same price!" and the sad thing is, -- they are probably correct for the market they are in.
    - sandGorgon 16y ago
      upvoted for "golfware"
    - hga 16y ago
      Thing is, there was a long period in the '90s when Oracle was the best solution, period. Non-mainframe DB2 was by the mid-90s (and perhaps earlier) nice, cheaper and simpler to administer but used conventional locking instead of MVCC (works for a small group of DB engineers but doesn't scale as well with lots of developers), MySQL was a non-ACID nightmare (heck, unless my research was really off in mid-1997 Linux didn't truly impliment fsync back then), PostgresSQL wasn't ready for prime time and the less said about SQLServer the better (it's improved since them or so I'm sold). And small fry like Informix weren't particularly worth dealing with, Ingres was dying, etc. etc. You can see how the above golfware paradigm could easily sink in when you really did have arguably the best solution, even if it cost twice as much as the next best (DB2, who's ecosystem (e.g. books) was and I'm sure still is much less rich). However as you and many others have noted the world is very different now.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
yock 16y ago
Adam is a seriously talented developer. I had the privilege of meeting him, as I'm sure many have over the last several years, at a Linux conference in Los Angeles a few years ago. His dtrace presentation still sticks out in my mind as a superior demonstration of superior software. Whomever ends up with him on their staff will be better off for it.
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  It looks like the Valley is about to get a serious influx of unburdened creativity and talent able to get working on the next big thing. Oracle's loss may well be lots of other companies' (and FOSS in general I hope)'s gain.
nanairo 16y ago
I would imagine (or at least I hope) that Oracle was fully aware when they bought Sun that their company philosophy was going to clash with Sun's and they would have lost a lot of bright people. It's a pity, but I don't think it came as a surprise to them.
- steve19 16y ago
  I think they were well aware of this. The goal of the management is to remove the sun culture and replace it with Oracle culture as soon as possible. The hardcore believers who are leaving simply helps Oracle.

jacquesm 16y ago

The curious part of me was hoping for a reason.

sprout 16y ago
I can't imagine what reason there could possibly be.