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People are scared of corporations, but they don't really have much ability to damage you. They can't cause physical harm to your body. They can't take away yo

People are scared of corporations, but they don't really have much ability to damage you. They can't cause physical harm to your body. They can't take away your loved ones. All they can do is take some money. You started life with $0, so you can probably make it all back. It would be inconvenient, but not an existential crisis. The likeliest outcome is that nothing will happen. The second most likely outcome is that they will say "don't do that again". People in this thread have a lot of speculation as to how evil Oracle is, but I haven't really seen them go out of their way to ruin people's lives. They sued Google over the range check function because they wanted a percentage of Android, not because they wanted to make Larry Page's life miserable. Legal action costs money, a lot of money, and even companies we think of as evil don't go out of their way to expose themselves to lawsuits. More scary to me than evil corporations are people that spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt to encourage others to self-censor where they are afraid to speak out themselves. Everyone knows about Oracle's benchmark clause. Everyone knows that you personally would never even think of violating it. The author of this post sees it differently, and on a forum called "Hacker News", we should celebrate the risk he's taking, not spread fear about what could happen in the worst case.

bmn__ 6y ago
> It would be inconvenient, but not an existential crisis. Don't generalise from your life; you only have to take care of yourself and Ayaya. A majority of people are deeply committed to a relationship/family/tribe, where losing all one's money definitely constitutes a crisis.
- jrockway 6y ago
  Hey now, leave my Ayaya out of this. Here is my point -- the potential losses are bounded. They can't unteach you what you've learned in 30 years of work, so you can probably earn income even after losing the biggest lawsuit EvilCorp can muster. Or go work at Starbucks if you are somehow banned from using computers, which is not really something that can happen for violating a software EULA. Compare this to driving to work -- you could get in a car accident that leaves you with a permanent brain injury. You'd never work again. You'd never recognize your family again. It's a big downside! And yet we drive. Furthermore, I would be a little surprised to be reading "Extreme Car News" and seeing the first comment say "wow, you shouldn't modify your car to have that kind of acceleration, you could die!" People are aware of the risk, as they are experts in the field, and we are here to learn what we can from their experience without taking the risk ourselves. It therefore surprises me that everyone on a forum called "Hacker News" is speculating about the worst case outcome for writing a single mailing list post. The discussion has devolved into a trainwreck of "look at what could happen to that guy, I'm glad that's not me," which I think is pretty nasty to the author of the mailing list post, and kind of against the hacker spirit. He took a risk. Let's learn what we can.
  - Delk 6y ago
    > Here is my point -- the potential losses are bounded. Are potential liabilities conjured up by corporate lawyers and awarded by courts limited by the amount of property or income you have right now, though? Because if they aren't, you could end up owing and paying from your future income as well. Also, we have bounded time, and having your goals significantly postponed by financial setbacks isn't necessarily just a temporary inconvenience. I'm not saying it's necessarily likely that one would end up paying anything, or a huge amount, or that people on HN (or elsewhere) wouldn't overestimate that probability or the potential damage, so of course this may be just a technicality. (Also, the comparison to driving may not be very good, depending on where you live. While accidents obviously do happen, and the results can be devastating or fatal, in many developed countries the probability of an individual ending up in a major accident isn't really that great if one does not engage in specifically risky behaviour.)
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    Every now and then you read a news story about something that you might expect would be a civil litigation matter becoming a criminal case. If you are going around thinking "potential losses are bounded" you should read some of those stories and think about tail risk. Corporations seem benign when you take for granted that their power isn't directed by anyone who has it in for you personally, and their employees are just going through the motions.
quietbritishjim 6y ago
Your first paragraph is totally ridiculous. Maybe you started with $0, but maybe that was 30 years ago and losing all your savings from then till now, including your home, is more than an inconvenience. If you have dependants then that loss could directly impact their lives and especially their education – what if some of that money had been for a college fund? In the US especially, and also to some extent in Europe, having less money affects what medical care you can afford, so it actually can cause physical harm. At the extreme end of things admittedly, these changes could put strain on relationships which could even mean you really do lose loved ones. I actually do agree it's unlikely that Oracle will follow through with their implied threat, but let's not pretend that their threat is meaningless.
- dang 6y ago
  When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your comment would be fine without the first sentence.

bmn__ 6y ago

> It would be inconvenient, but not an existential crisis. Don't generalise from your life; you only have to take care of yourself and Ayaya. A majority of people are deeply committed to a relationship/family/tribe, where losing all one's money definitely constitutes a crisis.

jrockway 6y ago
Hey now, leave my Ayaya out of this. Here is my point -- the potential losses are bounded. They can't unteach you what you've learned in 30 years of work, so you can probably earn income even after losing the biggest lawsuit EvilCorp can muster. Or go work at Starbucks if you are somehow banned from using computers, which is not really something that can happen for violating a software EULA. Compare this to driving to work -- you could get in a car accident that leaves you with a permanent brain injury. You'd never work again. You'd never recognize your family again. It's a big downside! And yet we drive. Furthermore, I would be a little surprised to be reading "Extreme Car News" and seeing the first comment say "wow, you shouldn't modify your car to have that kind of acceleration, you could die!" People are aware of the risk, as they are experts in the field, and we are here to learn what we can from their experience without taking the risk ourselves. It therefore surprises me that everyone on a forum called "Hacker News" is speculating about the worst case outcome for writing a single mailing list post. The discussion has devolved into a trainwreck of "look at what could happen to that guy, I'm glad that's not me," which I think is pretty nasty to the author of the mailing list post, and kind of against the hacker spirit. He took a risk. Let's learn what we can.
- Delk 6y ago
  > Here is my point -- the potential losses are bounded. Are potential liabilities conjured up by corporate lawyers and awarded by courts limited by the amount of property or income you have right now, though? Because if they aren't, you could end up owing and paying from your future income as well. Also, we have bounded time, and having your goals significantly postponed by financial setbacks isn't necessarily just a temporary inconvenience. I'm not saying it's necessarily likely that one would end up paying anything, or a huge amount, or that people on HN (or elsewhere) wouldn't overestimate that probability or the potential damage, so of course this may be just a technicality. (Also, the comparison to driving may not be very good, depending on where you live. While accidents obviously do happen, and the results can be devastating or fatal, in many developed countries the probability of an individual ending up in a major accident isn't really that great if one does not engage in specifically risky behaviour.)
- perl4ever 6y ago
  Every now and then you read a news story about something that you might expect would be a civil litigation matter becoming a criminal case. If you are going around thinking "potential losses are bounded" you should read some of those stories and think about tail risk. Corporations seem benign when you take for granted that their power isn't directed by anyone who has it in for you personally, and their employees are just going through the motions.

quietbritishjim 6y ago

Your first paragraph is totally ridiculous. Maybe you started with $0, but maybe that was 30 years ago and losing all your savings from then till now, including your home, is more than an inconvenience. If you have dependants then that loss could directly impact their lives and especially their education – what if some of that money had been for a college fund? In the US especially, and also to some extent in Europe, having less money affects what medical care you can afford, so it actually can cause physical harm. At the extreme end of things admittedly, these changes could put strain on relationships which could even mean you really do lose loved ones. I actually do agree it's unlikely that Oracle will follow through with their implied threat, but let's not pretend that their threat is meaningless.

dang 6y ago
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your comment would be fine without the first sentence.