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"“What just happened here is that Oracle couldn’t resist giving the community the finger one more time,” https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/oracle-and-openoffic

by fhars 4y ago

"“What just happened here is that Oracle couldn’t resist giving the community the finger one more time,” https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/oracle-and-openoffice-the-final-insult-72590.html https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/oracle-and-openoffice-the... (2011)

b112 4y ago
Sounds like Oracle, with their behaviour with, well, everything all the time. The whole OOo, mysqL, OEL junket within a span of a few years, made sure I'd never use them, ever, for anything. These days, I think it's maybe in alignment with why nigerian style scam spam is always so poorly worded, and looks so obvious. They want the easy marks. They want those not easily fooled, to not reply. And so this is how I see Oracle, and their horrid, childish, terrible behaviour. The want to weed out anyone who senses the scam, be it licensing hell, or just horrid core/services. Sadly, big corp and governments are slow to get the message, and I suspect more easily fleeced. The amount of times I've heard of a CEO or CTO in big corp, buying a product without even talking to devs/IT? The scam lives on.
- cogman10 4y ago
  Depends entirely on the project. Java (probably because oracle doesn't solely own it) has flourished primarily under their hand.
  - b112 4y ago
    And how many times did oracle java have regressions for timezone changes? I hate them for my 2am(1am?) emergency daylight savings calls. Oracle java flourished, but part of that has been suing everyone under the sun for using it. Look at android/google... More scam, more or the same from oracle.
    - cogman10 4y ago
      > And how many times did oracle java have regressions for timezone changes? Did other languages handle it better? Is this a Java problem or is this a "Governments changing timezone information all the time is hard" problem? > Oracle java flourished, but part of that has been suing everyone under the sun for using it. > Look at android/google... AFAIK, android/google is the ONLY ones they've sued. Do you have other examples?
      - rascul 4y ago
        It was before Oracle, but I'm reminded of Sun's lawsuit against Microsoft over their Java implementation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B#Sun's_litigation_against_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B#Sun's_litigatio...
        cogman10 4y ago
        Right, which is why I think it's a little crazy to talk about how litigious oracle is with Java when there's no major cases I can think of besides the google and microsoft cases. It's been over 10 years, you'd think there'd be far more examples of bad behavior.
      - cesarb 4y ago
        > Did other languages handle it better? Is this a Java problem or is this a "Governments changing timezone information all the time is hard" problem? Java is peculiarly annoying in that it doesn't use the normal tzdata database, it has its own copy of the database, with its own separate updating procedure. Even when it's the openjdk package on a Linux distribution, you often have a "tzdata" package (used by everything else) and a "tzdata-java" package (used exclusively for the JVM).
        adra 4y ago
        So yeah, cross platform is hard and this was their implementation of it? How do other languages handle this cross platform use case? I'm just being pragmatic here and less dogmatic. They chose to manage their own tz records so that the host is could be broken to high hell and theirs would still work. My assumption of this is having to support N different is and arch differences that made this non-trivial when they adopted it. Maybe now there are easier paths to take, so I suppose patches welcome?
- rlpb 4y ago
  What's the problem with MySQL?
  - mewse-hn 4y ago
    Since it's a database system it competes with Oracle's paid offerings and anyone aware of this conflict of interest has been waiting for them to hobble the product. Now there is Mysql "enterprise edition" and "community edition" - but paying can open you to a license audit from Oracle. Savvy people just use MariaDB and avoid the whole mess.
    - rlpb 4y ago
      I'm responding to a claim of "The whole OOo, mysqL, OEL junket...", and all you've got is to accuse Oracle of what they might do in the future? It's fine to hold a negative opinion of them because of what they might do, but I don't think it's fine to use MySQL as an example of something bad they've done already...because, as far as I can tell, they haven't. > Savvy people just use MariaDB and avoid the whole mess. I'll ask again: what mess?
      - mewse-hn 4y ago
        > what mess? I just described it to you?
      - b112 4y ago
        A few years back, Oracle created OEL, that is, Oracle Enterprise Linux. However all they did was to effectively clone Redhat's src rpms/repos, and call it a day. Later, as their stuff was 100% identical, they just used redhat's rpms for security updates. Essentially, one paid corp contributing not a single thing, and completely and totally leeching off of redhat. Redhat, whom they wanted to take market share from. The next step was to aggressively market OEL, and of course claim that it was better. Of course Redhat did a sensible thing, and moved its security patches behind a wall, and required a subscription to get them. Subscriptions were free, but the terms meant Oracle couldn't just copy them. And of course, Oracle couldn't tell people to use Redhat's url/servers for updates on the OS they claim to have "created". Bad image, and all that. Angry at the idea of having to manage their own security updates, and you know, do actual work, Oracle hid all security patches, and security update info for mysql. This made it impossible for not just Redhat, but everyone (eg, debian) to backport security fixes. And there is no equivalency here in Oracle's response. After all, Redhat security updates were created by bug reports about CVEs, and patches in software (eg, a ssh or apache patch), which Oracle could easily obtain and do themselves. Instead, Oracle stopped communicating specifics about security issues, and providing any patches for security updates, purposefully obscuring security fixes in massive single patches, with loads of other fixes and changes. This is the reason the entire open source community embraced mariadb, everyone had no choice. It is also the reason redhat threw money at centos, and essentially bought them. This allowed them to give security updates to centos directly. All this because Oracle threw a temper tantrum, at not being able to build an entire OS, for free, and leech off of the company they wanted to take market share from. Oracle is rotten through and through, pure scum.
Macha 4y ago
I do wish they had done the same with Solaris or ZFS. They could have at the stage given it a permissive license and then the community could have kept that or went to GPL and killed the whole CDDL/GPL debate, but now the non-Oracle-assigned changes are also under CDDL so that window has closed.

by fhars 4y ago

b112 4y ago

Sounds like Oracle, with their behaviour with, well, everything all the time. The whole OOo, mysqL, OEL junket within a span of a few years, made sure I'd never use them, ever, for anything. These days, I think it's maybe in alignment with why nigerian style scam spam is always so poorly worded, and looks so obvious. They want the easy marks. They want those not easily fooled, to not reply. And so this is how I see Oracle, and their horrid, childish, terrible behaviour. The want to weed out anyone who senses the scam, be it licensing hell, or just horrid core/services. Sadly, big corp and governments are slow to get the message, and I suspect more easily fleeced. The amount of times I've heard of a CEO or CTO in big corp, buying a product without even talking to devs/IT? The scam lives on.

cogman10 4y ago
Depends entirely on the project. Java (probably because oracle doesn't solely own it) has flourished primarily under their hand.
- b112 4y ago
  And how many times did oracle java have regressions for timezone changes? I hate them for my 2am(1am?) emergency daylight savings calls. Oracle java flourished, but part of that has been suing everyone under the sun for using it. Look at android/google... More scam, more or the same from oracle.
  - cogman10 4y ago
    > And how many times did oracle java have regressions for timezone changes? Did other languages handle it better? Is this a Java problem or is this a "Governments changing timezone information all the time is hard" problem? > Oracle java flourished, but part of that has been suing everyone under the sun for using it. > Look at android/google... AFAIK, android/google is the ONLY ones they've sued. Do you have other examples?
    - rascul 4y ago
      It was before Oracle, but I'm reminded of Sun's lawsuit against Microsoft over their Java implementation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B#Sun's_litigation_against_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B#Sun's_litigatio...
      - cogman10 4y ago
        Right, which is why I think it's a little crazy to talk about how litigious oracle is with Java when there's no major cases I can think of besides the google and microsoft cases. It's been over 10 years, you'd think there'd be far more examples of bad behavior.
    - cesarb 4y ago
      > Did other languages handle it better? Is this a Java problem or is this a "Governments changing timezone information all the time is hard" problem? Java is peculiarly annoying in that it doesn't use the normal tzdata database, it has its own copy of the database, with its own separate updating procedure. Even when it's the openjdk package on a Linux distribution, you often have a "tzdata" package (used by everything else) and a "tzdata-java" package (used exclusively for the JVM).
      - adra 4y ago
        So yeah, cross platform is hard and this was their implementation of it? How do other languages handle this cross platform use case? I'm just being pragmatic here and less dogmatic. They chose to manage their own tz records so that the host is could be broken to high hell and theirs would still work. My assumption of this is having to support N different is and arch differences that made this non-trivial when they adopted it. Maybe now there are easier paths to take, so I suppose patches welcome?
rlpb 4y ago
What's the problem with MySQL?
- mewse-hn 4y ago
  Since it's a database system it competes with Oracle's paid offerings and anyone aware of this conflict of interest has been waiting for them to hobble the product. Now there is Mysql "enterprise edition" and "community edition" - but paying can open you to a license audit from Oracle. Savvy people just use MariaDB and avoid the whole mess.
  - rlpb 4y ago
    I'm responding to a claim of "The whole OOo, mysqL, OEL junket...", and all you've got is to accuse Oracle of what they might do in the future? It's fine to hold a negative opinion of them because of what they might do, but I don't think it's fine to use MySQL as an example of something bad they've done already...because, as far as I can tell, they haven't. > Savvy people just use MariaDB and avoid the whole mess. I'll ask again: what mess?
    - mewse-hn 4y ago
      > what mess? I just described it to you?
    - b112 4y ago
      A few years back, Oracle created OEL, that is, Oracle Enterprise Linux. However all they did was to effectively clone Redhat's src rpms/repos, and call it a day. Later, as their stuff was 100% identical, they just used redhat's rpms for security updates. Essentially, one paid corp contributing not a single thing, and completely and totally leeching off of redhat. Redhat, whom they wanted to take market share from. The next step was to aggressively market OEL, and of course claim that it was better. Of course Redhat did a sensible thing, and moved its security patches behind a wall, and required a subscription to get them. Subscriptions were free, but the terms meant Oracle couldn't just copy them. And of course, Oracle couldn't tell people to use Redhat's url/servers for updates on the OS they claim to have "created". Bad image, and all that. Angry at the idea of having to manage their own security updates, and you know, do actual work, Oracle hid all security patches, and security update info for mysql. This made it impossible for not just Redhat, but everyone (eg, debian) to backport security fixes. And there is no equivalency here in Oracle's response. After all, Redhat security updates were created by bug reports about CVEs, and patches in software (eg, a ssh or apache patch), which Oracle could easily obtain and do themselves. Instead, Oracle stopped communicating specifics about security issues, and providing any patches for security updates, purposefully obscuring security fixes in massive single patches, with loads of other fixes and changes. This is the reason the entire open source community embraced mariadb, everyone had no choice. It is also the reason redhat threw money at centos, and essentially bought them. This allowed them to give security updates to centos directly. All this because Oracle threw a temper tantrum, at not being able to build an entire OS, for free, and leech off of the company they wanted to take market share from. Oracle is rotten through and through, pure scum.

Macha 4y ago

I do wish they had done the same with Solaris or ZFS. They could have at the stage given it a permissive license and then the community could have kept that or went to GPL and killed the whole CDDL/GPL debate, but now the non-Oracle-assigned changes are also under CDDL so that window has closed.