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For a large set of problem spaces you can replace "oracle" with "cisco" or "microsoft" or "AWS". These companies demand a premium over "rolling your own" or "i

by cduzz 4y ago

For a large set of problem spaces you can replace "oracle" with "cisco" or "microsoft" or "AWS". These companies demand a premium over "rolling your own" or "integrating a pile of better at solving a specific problem" products. In some cases the premium is well earned, in others it's just rent-seeking monopolist behavior, depending on how mature the product space is.

coredog64 4y ago
Nitpick: Rent-seeking is an economic term that describes an actor that provides no value for end users. It is not a synonym for someone who rents you something. It’s confusing because it can apply to landlords who also seek to restrict supply, and people then conflate the former with the term. Of those companies listed, maybe you can finger Oracle for their shenanigans with Java.
- cduzz 4y ago
  The far end of this continuum is CA Technologies where they buy products with an entrenched customer base and squeeze them for money while putting the product on "sustaining engineering" (aka hospice care). On the continuum of "innovative product solving hard problem" to "Rent seeing monopoly" AWS is still in the "build the mouse trap" phase while oracle's half way to CA.
- RajT88 4y ago
  > Of those companies listed, maybe you can finger Oracle for their shenanigans with Java. Oracle licensing on the cloud can be byzantine. In part because their sales people don't seem to all have the same understanding. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/data-architecture-blog/constrained-vcpu-and-oracle-licensing-in-azure/ba-p/3041537 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/data-architecture-blo... (read the comments!) Of course, license true-ups in my experience are allowed the latitude of, "Whatever you can get them to agree to". I've heard a few times Oracle sales folks trying to pressure companies into buying licenses for all physical machine cores for the host underneath their VM's in the cloud. Which is, frankly, malarkey and not even supported by their own docs. (Apparently this is how it is licensed on-prem if you own a VMWare cluster or something, but they carve out an exemption specifically for cloud hosting in their docs - but they try anyways)

by cduzz 4y ago

coredog64 4y ago

Nitpick: Rent-seeking is an economic term that describes an actor that provides no value for end users. It is not a synonym for someone who rents you something. It’s confusing because it can apply to landlords who also seek to restrict supply, and people then conflate the former with the term. Of those companies listed, maybe you can finger Oracle for their shenanigans with Java.

cduzz 4y ago
The far end of this continuum is CA Technologies where they buy products with an entrenched customer base and squeeze them for money while putting the product on "sustaining engineering" (aka hospice care). On the continuum of "innovative product solving hard problem" to "Rent seeing monopoly" AWS is still in the "build the mouse trap" phase while oracle's half way to CA.
RajT88 4y ago
> Of those companies listed, maybe you can finger Oracle for their shenanigans with Java. Oracle licensing on the cloud can be byzantine. In part because their sales people don't seem to all have the same understanding. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/data-architecture-blog/constrained-vcpu-and-oracle-licensing-in-azure/ba-p/3041537 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/data-architecture-blo... (read the comments!) Of course, license true-ups in my experience are allowed the latitude of, "Whatever you can get them to agree to". I've heard a few times Oracle sales folks trying to pressure companies into buying licenses for all physical machine cores for the host underneath their VM's in the cloud. Which is, frankly, malarkey and not even supported by their own docs. (Apparently this is how it is licensed on-prem if you own a VMWare cluster or something, but they carve out an exemption specifically for cloud hosting in their docs - but they try anyways)