6 ms·

No, that is pretty much accurate. Their flagship database is outstanding, worth every penny, the one to beat. However everything else they touch just wilts and

No, that is pretty much accurate. Their flagship database is outstanding, worth every penny, the one to beat. However everything else they touch just wilts and dies. They don’t just have a black thumb, they have eleven of them. They killed Sun, Solaris, libdb (remember sleepycat software?), Java, and would have killed mysql if it didn’t fork. They are the bane of anyone looking for a job that encounters their horrid candidate management software. Forget COVID, murder hornets, and global warming - my nightmare is that one day Richard Hipp retires or falls ill and Oracle takes over SQLite.

throwawaynothx 6y ago
Ian Murdock, one of the creators of debian even resigned once sun was acquired by Oracle.
mastazi 6y ago
Regarding the MySQL forks, what is the story? Do you mean MariaDB, or some other fork that I'm not aware of? Honestly I'm surprised at how MySQL managed to survive... Among all those other products that you mentioned, I would have thought it would be the first to die, because some people at Oracle might see it as a competitor of Oracle DB.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  MySQL success is a mix of momentum, innovation in forks being backported, and a strategic focus on InnoDB at the expense of all other engines. I'd say they are doing a mediocre job on the whole. But I may just be bitter over recent bugs like renaming a table crashing the server.
  - awill 6y ago
    didn't Redhat remove MySql from RHEL7 and replace with MariaDB, only to add it back (in addition to Maria) in RHEL8? Any ideas why?
- neurostimulant 6y ago
  IIRC are several forks of MySQL other than MariaDB, such as Percona.
  - throwaway8941 6y ago
    Percona is not really a fork, it's the upstream MySQL (8 currently) with some patches which add more visibility to what's going on inside (and some performance stuff like the thread pool).
    - neurostimulant 6y ago
      Arguable these kind of "forks" are the one that keep mysql development and innovation progressing because those vendors would often submit those patches upstream.
btilly 6y ago
Their flagship database was outstanding 20 years ago. Today..not worth the price tag. And if you do pay the price tag, you're going to need some high priced DBAs to baby it along. To your list I would add that with Hudson they achieved such an own-goal that all anyone knows is the renamed fork, Jenkins. (Which I believe was named after Leeroy Jenkins...)
- necubi 6y ago
  It was actually named after the butler from Scooby Doo (Hudson was named after Angus Hudson, the butler from Upstairs, Downstairs)
- phs318u 6y ago
  > Their flagship database was outstanding 20 years ago. Agreed. Having worked with and delivered some great solutions with Oracle DB in the 2000's, I've been telling people since at least 2010, that Oracle used to be the answer to the question, "which enterprise database?", but now is the answer to "which is the one vendor I should avoid at all costs?"
- sangnoir 6y ago
  > Which I believe was named after Leeroy Jenkins... IIRC, they wanted an English butler name[1] snooty enough to match "Hudson" - and Jenkins fit the bill (you can almost hear the British accent) 1. https://www.jenkins.io/blog/2011/01/11/hudsons-future/ https://www.jenkins.io/blog/2011/01/11/hudsons-future/
zmmmmm 6y ago
Not sure they successfully killed Java yet ...
lmm 6y ago
> Their flagship database is outstanding, worth every penny, the one to beat. Nah. If it were any good then the license wouldn't prohibit you from benchmarking it.
bch 6y ago
SQLite “license”[0]: Instead of a license, the SQLite source code offers a blessing: May you do good and not evil May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others May you share freely, never taking more than you give. [0] https://www.sqlite.org/different.html https://www.sqlite.org/different.html
CaptainZapp 6y ago
Doing business with Oracle is a very risky thing. Their hard selling tactics are despicable, bordering on blackmail. Oracle software licenses are so opaque that there's almost no way to be compliant and that's by design. So in essence: Either you pay more for your existing installation or buy some additional shit, which you don't need, or else. The or else is the threat of a software audit, which is almost guaranteed to find you non-compliant and gives you 30 days to either pay up or get rid of every Oracle software component. Best of luck with that. There are umpteen stories about this behavior on the web. For example this: [1]. Oracle's business model is not really technology, but a licensing racket for enterprise customers. Sort of Nice company you have here, would be a shame if something happens to it [1] https://www.netnetweb.com/content/blog/oracle-audits-will-get-worse-in2018 https://www.netnetweb.com/content/blog/oracle-audits-will-ge... edit : rephrased a sentence

throwawaynothx 6y ago

Ian Murdock, one of the creators of debian even resigned once sun was acquired by Oracle.

mastazi 6y ago

Regarding the MySQL forks, what is the story? Do you mean MariaDB, or some other fork that I'm not aware of? Honestly I'm surprised at how MySQL managed to survive... Among all those other products that you mentioned, I would have thought it would be the first to die, because some people at Oracle might see it as a competitor of Oracle DB.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
MySQL success is a mix of momentum, innovation in forks being backported, and a strategic focus on InnoDB at the expense of all other engines. I'd say they are doing a mediocre job on the whole. But I may just be bitter over recent bugs like renaming a table crashing the server.
- awill 6y ago
  didn't Redhat remove MySql from RHEL7 and replace with MariaDB, only to add it back (in addition to Maria) in RHEL8? Any ideas why?
neurostimulant 6y ago
IIRC are several forks of MySQL other than MariaDB, such as Percona.
- throwaway8941 6y ago
  Percona is not really a fork, it's the upstream MySQL (8 currently) with some patches which add more visibility to what's going on inside (and some performance stuff like the thread pool).
  - neurostimulant 6y ago
    Arguable these kind of "forks" are the one that keep mysql development and innovation progressing because those vendors would often submit those patches upstream.

btilly 6y ago

Their flagship database was outstanding 20 years ago. Today..not worth the price tag. And if you do pay the price tag, you're going to need some high priced DBAs to baby it along. To your list I would add that with Hudson they achieved such an own-goal that all anyone knows is the renamed fork, Jenkins. (Which I believe was named after Leeroy Jenkins...)

necubi 6y ago
It was actually named after the butler from Scooby Doo (Hudson was named after Angus Hudson, the butler from Upstairs, Downstairs)
phs318u 6y ago
> Their flagship database was outstanding 20 years ago. Agreed. Having worked with and delivered some great solutions with Oracle DB in the 2000's, I've been telling people since at least 2010, that Oracle used to be the answer to the question, "which enterprise database?", but now is the answer to "which is the one vendor I should avoid at all costs?"
sangnoir 6y ago
> Which I believe was named after Leeroy Jenkins... IIRC, they wanted an English butler name[1] snooty enough to match "Hudson" - and Jenkins fit the bill (you can almost hear the British accent) 1. https://www.jenkins.io/blog/2011/01/11/hudsons-future/ https://www.jenkins.io/blog/2011/01/11/hudsons-future/

zmmmmm 6y ago

Not sure they successfully killed Java yet ...

lmm 6y ago

> Their flagship database is outstanding, worth every penny, the one to beat. Nah. If it were any good then the license wouldn't prohibit you from benchmarking it.

bch 6y ago

SQLite “license”[0]: Instead of a license, the SQLite source code offers a blessing: May you do good and not evil May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others May you share freely, never taking more than you give. [0] https://www.sqlite.org/different.html https://www.sqlite.org/different.html

CaptainZapp 6y ago

Doing business with Oracle is a very risky thing. Their hard selling tactics are despicable, bordering on blackmail. Oracle software licenses are so opaque that there's almost no way to be compliant and that's by design. So in essence: Either you pay more for your existing installation or buy some additional shit, which you don't need, or else. The or else is the threat of a software audit, which is almost guaranteed to find you non-compliant and gives you 30 days to either pay up or get rid of every Oracle software component. Best of luck with that. There are umpteen stories about this behavior on the web. For example this: [1]. Oracle's business model is not really technology, but a licensing racket for enterprise customers. Sort of Nice company you have here, would be a shame if something happens to it [1] https://www.netnetweb.com/content/blog/oracle-audits-will-get-worse-in2018 https://www.netnetweb.com/content/blog/oracle-audits-will-ge... edit : rephrased a sentence