5 ms·

When has Oracle ever added value whatsoever to the tech ecosystem?

by fluidcruft 1y ago

tombert 1y ago
I don’t love Oracle, but GraalVM is pretty cool. That and the vanilla JVM keeps getting updates.
ternaryoperator 1y ago
They've done a ton of stuff with Java, including open-sourcing it in its entirety.
homebrewer 1y ago
If it's an honest question and not just the beginning of a hate-fest, let's think... Both Java the language and OpenJDK the main runtime & development kit have had much more money and manpower poured into them under Oracle than they ever had previously. Both continue to advance rapidly after almost dying pre-Oracle acquisition. MySQL 8 (released in 2018) was a massive release that brought many long awaited features (like CTEs) to the database, although MySQL's development have stalled during the past few years. Oracle employs several Linux kernel developers and is one of major contributors (especially to XFS and btrfs): https://lwn.net/Articles/1022414 https://lwn.net/Articles/1022414 Not top 3 or even top 10, but better than most companies out there. That's all I can remember. edit: after thinking about it for a couple more minutes, they're also the main developer of GraalVM — the only high quality FOSS AOT compiler for Java (also mentioned by a sibling comment), and are writing one of the major relatively lightweight modern alternatives to Spring (the other two being Micronaut and Quarkus): https://helidon.io https://helidon.io
- beanjuiceII 1y ago
  people just like hating on successful companies, a HN special.. I ignore most those types of posts on this site because they are without any merit
  - toyg 1y ago
    I think the Oracle hate goes a bit beyond the generic hatred for successful companies (be it Microsoft, FAANG, etc). People actually used to like the products that made these companies explode. Windows 2000 was cool; Facebook was cool; Google was cool. Whenever they stop being pure unadulterated evil for a few minutes, very quickly a lot of people are willing to forgive them and welcome them back into polite society. But as long as most geeks can remember, Oracle has never been cool. At its peak, the company enabled a world of snooty BOFH DBAs, selling unreasonably expensive products to well-oiled middle-managers. And then they started "acqui-squeezing" adjacent products, blackmailing their own customers, and suing everyone in sight. They could cure cancer tomorrow, gifting all the related IPs to the world, and most geeks would still see them as scum trying to whitewash their image - and they would probably be right. There are some great engineers in Oracle, but their management is all that is wrong with capitalism.
    - kragen 1y ago
      From 01979 until about 02000, Oracle's RDBMS software was probably the best in the world, and definitely better than the free-software alternatives like Postgres. (Remember that MariaDB, then named MySQL, didn't become free software until 02000 and didn't support transactions until even later.) For several years after that, it was still the best database for some purposes. And that's true even though the Bastard Database Operators From Hell were present from the very beginning. SQL is kind of shitty, but the relational database model is so great that it makes up for it. And until the rise of entity component systems, SQLite, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB, all the decent implementations were proprietary software. Separately, although SQL's implementation of transactions is even more broken than its implementation of the relational model, transactional concurrency is also great enough to make up for SQL, and, again, all the usable implementations used to be proprietary.
      - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
        > From 01979 until about 02000, Oracle's RDBMS software was probably the best in the world, and definitely better than the free-software alternatives like Postgres. [...] For several years after that, it was still the best database for some purposes. Which RDBMS software has/have become the best in the world after that?
- arp242 1y ago
  There's also VirtualBox (inherited from Sun). And probably some other things. Although from what I heard you risk being besieged by aggressive Oracle salespeople if they suspect you're using one of the proprietary "extension pack" features. This sort of thing is why I would think very hard before using anything from Oracle.
  - cerved 1y ago
    LMS/GLAS
  - bch 1y ago
    Made this mistake w VirtualBox once - never again. I ended up somehow running the proprietary version which “phoned home” and some 30 or 60 days later corporate got a call. When it comes to Oracle, I take Nancy Reagan’s advice [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Say_No https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Say_No
- ksec 1y ago
  >although MySQL's development have stalled during the past few years. 9.0 is finally released and we are now at 9.3. While nothing big or exciting with every release but development is steady. MySQL 8.0 will reach EOL in April 2026 so every should move to 8.4 LTS soon(ish) and 9.7x should also be LTS by then. I know most on HN is about Postgres but modern MySQL is decent. I think a lot of people still have MySQL from 5.0 era. Which is also somewhat true with Java as well. I think Oracle do contribute lot of open source code, they just dont get the credit or brag about it.
- timeon 1y ago
  > MySQL 8 (released in 2018) Many already moved to MariaDB, because development stalled after Oracle bought Sun (which bought MySQL).
  - tomnipotent 1y ago
    MariaDB has seen decent adoption, but it's still an order of magnitude less than MySQL.
    - thayne 1y ago
      I think that postgresql's popularity has also benefited quite a bit from Oracle's acquisition of MySQL
  - ocdtrekkie 1y ago
    I wonder how much of that was due to cursed distro repositories. I will probably never forget the rage I felt at discovering the reason my scripts broke between Debian versions was because "apt-get install mysql" started silently installing MariaDB instead, which was close but subtly different enough. (I am honestly surprised considering an Oracle trademark is involved, no lawsuits were filed over this.)
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Regarding Java, also to note that alongside IBM, they were cooperating with Sun since the very early days from Java, including the Network Computer efforts, for Java based thin clients.
phartenfeller 1y ago
I think you underestimate the impact of their database on the world. They were a huge tech innovator in that part (and actually still are).

When has Oracle ever added value whatsoever to the tech ecosystem?

tombert 1y ago

I don’t love Oracle, but GraalVM is pretty cool. That and the vanilla JVM keeps getting updates.

ternaryoperator 1y ago

They've done a ton of stuff with Java, including open-sourcing it in its entirety.

homebrewer 1y ago

If it's an honest question and not just the beginning of a hate-fest, let's think... Both Java the language and OpenJDK the main runtime & development kit have had much more money and manpower poured into them under Oracle than they ever had previously. Both continue to advance rapidly after almost dying pre-Oracle acquisition. MySQL 8 (released in 2018) was a massive release that brought many long awaited features (like CTEs) to the database, although MySQL's development have stalled during the past few years. Oracle employs several Linux kernel developers and is one of major contributors (especially to XFS and btrfs): https://lwn.net/Articles/1022414 https://lwn.net/Articles/1022414 Not top 3 or even top 10, but better than most companies out there. That's all I can remember. edit: after thinking about it for a couple more minutes, they're also the main developer of GraalVM — the only high quality FOSS AOT compiler for Java (also mentioned by a sibling comment), and are writing one of the major relatively lightweight modern alternatives to Spring (the other two being Micronaut and Quarkus): https://helidon.io https://helidon.io

beanjuiceII 1y ago
people just like hating on successful companies, a HN special.. I ignore most those types of posts on this site because they are without any merit
- toyg 1y ago
  I think the Oracle hate goes a bit beyond the generic hatred for successful companies (be it Microsoft, FAANG, etc). People actually used to like the products that made these companies explode. Windows 2000 was cool; Facebook was cool; Google was cool. Whenever they stop being pure unadulterated evil for a few minutes, very quickly a lot of people are willing to forgive them and welcome them back into polite society. But as long as most geeks can remember, Oracle has never been cool. At its peak, the company enabled a world of snooty BOFH DBAs, selling unreasonably expensive products to well-oiled middle-managers. And then they started "acqui-squeezing" adjacent products, blackmailing their own customers, and suing everyone in sight. They could cure cancer tomorrow, gifting all the related IPs to the world, and most geeks would still see them as scum trying to whitewash their image - and they would probably be right. There are some great engineers in Oracle, but their management is all that is wrong with capitalism.
  - kragen 1y ago
    From 01979 until about 02000, Oracle's RDBMS software was probably the best in the world, and definitely better than the free-software alternatives like Postgres. (Remember that MariaDB, then named MySQL, didn't become free software until 02000 and didn't support transactions until even later.) For several years after that, it was still the best database for some purposes. And that's true even though the Bastard Database Operators From Hell were present from the very beginning. SQL is kind of shitty, but the relational database model is so great that it makes up for it. And until the rise of entity component systems, SQLite, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB, all the decent implementations were proprietary software. Separately, although SQL's implementation of transactions is even more broken than its implementation of the relational model, transactional concurrency is also great enough to make up for SQL, and, again, all the usable implementations used to be proprietary.
    - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
      > From 01979 until about 02000, Oracle's RDBMS software was probably the best in the world, and definitely better than the free-software alternatives like Postgres. [...] For several years after that, it was still the best database for some purposes. Which RDBMS software has/have become the best in the world after that?
arp242 1y ago
There's also VirtualBox (inherited from Sun). And probably some other things. Although from what I heard you risk being besieged by aggressive Oracle salespeople if they suspect you're using one of the proprietary "extension pack" features. This sort of thing is why I would think very hard before using anything from Oracle.
- cerved 1y ago
  LMS/GLAS
- bch 1y ago
  Made this mistake w VirtualBox once - never again. I ended up somehow running the proprietary version which “phoned home” and some 30 or 60 days later corporate got a call. When it comes to Oracle, I take Nancy Reagan’s advice [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Say_No https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Say_No
ksec 1y ago
>although MySQL's development have stalled during the past few years. 9.0 is finally released and we are now at 9.3. While nothing big or exciting with every release but development is steady. MySQL 8.0 will reach EOL in April 2026 so every should move to 8.4 LTS soon(ish) and 9.7x should also be LTS by then. I know most on HN is about Postgres but modern MySQL is decent. I think a lot of people still have MySQL from 5.0 era. Which is also somewhat true with Java as well. I think Oracle do contribute lot of open source code, they just dont get the credit or brag about it.
timeon 1y ago
> MySQL 8 (released in 2018) Many already moved to MariaDB, because development stalled after Oracle bought Sun (which bought MySQL).
- tomnipotent 1y ago
  MariaDB has seen decent adoption, but it's still an order of magnitude less than MySQL.
  - thayne 1y ago
    I think that postgresql's popularity has also benefited quite a bit from Oracle's acquisition of MySQL
- ocdtrekkie 1y ago
  I wonder how much of that was due to cursed distro repositories. I will probably never forget the rage I felt at discovering the reason my scripts broke between Debian versions was because "apt-get install mysql" started silently installing MariaDB instead, which was close but subtly different enough. (I am honestly surprised considering an Oracle trademark is involved, no lawsuits were filed over this.)
pjmlp 1y ago
Regarding Java, also to note that alongside IBM, they were cooperating with Sun since the very early days from Java, including the Network Computer efforts, for Java based thin clients.

phartenfeller 1y ago

I think you underestimate the impact of their database on the world. They were a huge tech innovator in that part (and actually still are).