4 ms·

I always find the story of DEC interesting as well.

rbanffy 5y ago
It was the pinnacle of tech tragedy to see them being acquired by Compaq. At least until Oracle, of all companies, acquired Sun...
- pjmlp 5y ago
  No one else stepped in to cover their offer, it was either Oracle, or be broken into pieces to pay their debts.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    Honestly that would have been much better for the world.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      I guess, people would enjoy being stuck with Java 6 or going back to C++98, or never have experienced a UNIX where C is actually prevented to do its typical misbehaviours since a decade now.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        > being stuck with Java 6 OpenJDK would have remained an option and other organizations would be more than able to steer the language.
        pjmlp 5y ago
        You mean the same organizations that currently contribute about 10%, and mostly create their own distributions out of Oracle work?
        rbanffy 5y ago
        If Oracle wants to control it, they'd better put the effort in.
        pjmlp 5y ago
        Someone needs to step in when no one else does.
      - panick21_ 5y ago
        Why? Just because a company gets massively smaller or sells of division doesn't mean its bad. Almost everybody other then Oracle would likely not have closed Solaris development for example. Whoever would have ownership of Java would not just close it. Java was way to popular and would have continued development no matter where it landed.
        pjmlp 5y ago
        Solaris development is still going on, even if very slowly. It was Oracle that introduced SPARC ADI, the very first sucessful use of hardware memory tagging in commercial UNIXes, which others are still followers. Yeah, that is why Oracle still does like 80% of the work on OpenJDK, where are those contributors doing language innovation instead of repacking OpenJDK distributions?
        panick21_ 5y ago
        Oracle did far more bad then good and the can go fuck themselves.
        pjmlp 5y ago
        They rescued the assets they cared about, from a dying company no one else cared about, other than doing cheap talk and bad badmouthing Oracle.
        panick21_ 5y ago
        They continued development on many of the open source and make them proprietary again them requiring forks to lots of projects. And those projects actually did continue internal development, it would be different if they just stopped all development. And even without that they suck as a company and it sucks to be their costumer for the most part. Even if they release something open source its often a license that prevents anybody else from doing much with it. They are pretty much one of the worst tech companies in the world and pretty much most people agree with this.

It was the pinnacle of tech tragedy to see them being acquired by Compaq. At least until Oracle, of all companies, acquired Sun...

pjmlp 5y ago
No one else stepped in to cover their offer, it was either Oracle, or be broken into pieces to pay their debts.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  Honestly that would have been much better for the world.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    I guess, people would enjoy being stuck with Java 6 or going back to C++98, or never have experienced a UNIX where C is actually prevented to do its typical misbehaviours since a decade now.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      > being stuck with Java 6 OpenJDK would have remained an option and other organizations would be more than able to steer the language.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        You mean the same organizations that currently contribute about 10%, and mostly create their own distributions out of Oracle work?
        rbanffy 5y ago
        If Oracle wants to control it, they'd better put the effort in.
        pjmlp 5y ago
        Someone needs to step in when no one else does.
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      Why? Just because a company gets massively smaller or sells of division doesn't mean its bad. Almost everybody other then Oracle would likely not have closed Solaris development for example. Whoever would have ownership of Java would not just close it. Java was way to popular and would have continued development no matter where it landed.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        Solaris development is still going on, even if very slowly. It was Oracle that introduced SPARC ADI, the very first sucessful use of hardware memory tagging in commercial UNIXes, which others are still followers. Yeah, that is why Oracle still does like 80% of the work on OpenJDK, where are those contributors doing language innovation instead of repacking OpenJDK distributions?
        panick21_ 5y ago
        Oracle did far more bad then good and the can go fuck themselves.
        pjmlp 5y ago
        They rescued the assets they cared about, from a dying company no one else cared about, other than doing cheap talk and bad badmouthing Oracle.
        panick21_ 5y ago
        They continued development on many of the open source and make them proprietary again them requiring forks to lots of projects. And those projects actually did continue internal development, it would be different if they just stopped all development. And even without that they suck as a company and it sucks to be their costumer for the most part. Even if they release something open source its often a license that prevents anybody else from doing much with it. They are pretty much one of the worst tech companies in the world and pretty much most people agree with this.