4 ms·

What I don't understand is why anyone with half a brain would even venture to touch Oracle with a ten foot pole given that they've had this reputation for at le

What I don't understand is why anyone with half a brain would even venture to touch Oracle with a ten foot pole given that they've had this reputation for at least the last 25 years. Why, people?

theideaofcoffee 2mo ago
Ass-covering. The same reason why most huge enterprises buy insane support contracts for every other piece of shitty software: support, and someone to blame when production goes pear-shaped. Because there’s no real management left anywhere, there’s no time to grow expertise internally and everyone just needs that hit of Risk Management (tm), they’ll go to whatever lengths to get it. Oracle is like the ultimate warm, fuzzy blanket where that fuzz is actually mold, it delivers the scared-shitless enterprises from having to think for themselves.
dearsiary7 2mo ago
Because my boss like golf courses and even more when oracle sales rep pays.
- TimTheTinker 2mo ago
  Wait, Oracle sales reps give decision-makers personal kickbacks for buying Oracle?? Stay classy Oracle. Such a banal depth of evil. Why hasn't this been outlawed? I guess companies that knowingly employ such managers deserve to lose whatever Oracle's legal team extracts out of them.
  - xyzzy_plugh 2mo ago
    You've clearly never purchased enterprise software at scale before. Oracle doesn't do anything that everyone else isn't already doing. Dinners, drinks, bottles of scotch, tickets to baseball and football games, plane tickets to attend training sessions in conference rooms attached to nice beachside hotels, business lunches at strip clubs, Superbowl tickets, cruise tickets, wristwatches... Not to mention mugs, tshirts, water bottles and stickers. Everything is on the menu.
    - TimTheTinker 2mo ago
      I'm calling my senators and house rep. Holy crap.
      - kdheiwns 2mo ago
        Not sure why you're surprised. That's just how business/networking/capitalism works everywhere on earth and it's been like that since the dawn of civilization. And why would Congress stop is since they're all getting the same benefits and don't even hide it?
        TimTheTinker 2mo ago
        I guess I thought integrity was still at least considered an ideal to strive for in the West.
        kdheiwns 2mo ago
        That imaginary integrity never existed. If anything, favors for favors are now less common than they used to be.
        inigyou 2mo ago
        That's just what they tell the peons, so the peons won't compete with them for the corruption opportunities.
        ekianjo 2mo ago
        why do you think politicians want to become politicians? so that they can get the gravy too
        eru 2mo ago
        Well, nothing specific to capitalism here.
      - Bendy 2mo ago
        There is a scene in a French documentary in which a former Dassault boss displays his vintage wine collection as one of his many tools to ease arms supply deals with various nations. When the journalist asked him if it really works like this he responded, “Of course, because men are pigs!”
  - smuhakg 2mo ago
    They've been charged multiple times for bribing foreign government officials. https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022-173 https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022-173 This is why corporate procurement in a large enterprise is so bureaucratic. If you have 20 layers of approval that's 20 people that need cocaine and prostitutes yet could blow the whistle.
    - walrus01 2mo ago
      > They've been charged multiple times for bribing foreign government officials. Maybe they've been hiring former SNC Lavalin executives?
    - preg_match 2mo ago
      One of the worst side-effects of corruption and cronyism isn't even the corruption part, it's the insane administrative cost it inevitably breeds in process in order to try to fix. This is largely why the US government is so inefficient. Our government agencies have been trained to outsource absolutely everything. A static site? No, you couldn't possibly hire one or two engineers to do that, you need a multi-million dollar contract! Well, when you do that, the corruption risk is through the roof. Now we mitigate with anti-corruption, anti-fraud checks out the fucking wazoo. That's expensive. And we're putting that expense ON TOP of the exorbitant contract fees.
  - eru 2mo ago
    > Wait, Oracle sales reps give decision-makers personal kickbacks for buying Oracle?? When Oracle does it, it's a scandal. But when an airline gives people personal 'miles' for their business trips, it's business as usual.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Pretty much every business does this to acquire large corporate and government customers. Every customer acquisition will be weeks or months of in-person discussions over golf, expensive dinners, resort vacations, or the like.
  - listenallyall 2mo ago
    How is it a kickback to invite someone to play golf? A kickback would be if he handed him a big check in the locker room. Take it easy dude, it's business, kickback or not certainly isn't "evil".
    - tsimionescu 2mo ago
      How is paying for someone to have fun with the intention that they will then do business with you not a kickback? Just because you're not getting cash doesn't mean it's not a bribe.
      - listenallyall 2mo ago
        It's a meeting, a sales pitch, that takes place on a golf course. No different than over a meal, or at a sporting event. A kickback, by definition, only happens after the deal is closed, the recipient of the funds "kicks back" some of the revenue (or his commission) to the decision maker. If hasn't progressed beyond "the intention that they will do business with you" then it can't be a kickback.
        mietek 2mo ago
        Keep telling yourself that.
        tsimionescu 2mo ago
        What happens here is that the buyer "kicks back" a fat contract to their sales buddy who took them to that great golf resort. Or, if the terminology is wrong, you can just say that the sales agent bribed the buyer with a golf trip in order to get the contract on better terms, to the detriment of they buyer's company. Either way, golf games paid for by people trying to sell something are obviously morally and ethically wrong, and would be extremely illegal if they happened with a government employee.
        listenallyall 2mo ago
        What happens when two salesmen both take the guy out for golf? Someone's getting stiffed, right? And it happens with government employees all the time, just a bit differently. The lobbyist is a member at Shinnecock Hills or some other private, prestigious golf course that costs $100,000+ to join. Then he invites the senator out, the "guest fee" is a nominal amount like $120, which he happily pays to play a round on a US Open quality course. Of course the senator charges his transportation and hotel to his office, paid out of campaign funds or something. Shit like this happens every single day, stop pretending to be so shocked or morally righteous.
- csixty4 2mo ago
  Mine liked steak dinners.
wolfi1 2mo ago
nobody has ever been fired for using Oracle
- TimTheTinker 2mo ago
  I'd fire someone for using Oracle. I'd put it in the employee handbook. I bet Oxide would too.
  - trollbridge 2mo ago
    Oracle products (including VirtualBox and MySQL) are banned in our workplace as well. We do not want to deal with licensing nightmares because someone accidentally downloaded the JDK or the E1000 drivers for VBox.
  - bdelmas 2mo ago
    I would too and I have declined jobs everywhere they used their tech and it was not because they had to. And even then, unless it’s like Google and such I am very reluctant. No thanks!
walrus01 2mo ago
I have mentally trained myself to do a text substitution, whenever I see "Oracle" in a forum on the Internet, such as here, I try to substitute it with "Larry Ellison Needs A Bigger Yacht".
- the-smug-one 2mo ago
  What? Why not "One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison"?
  - walrus01 2mo ago
    We could also go with "Oh Really? A Contemptuous Larry Ellison"
KronisLV 2mo ago
> Why, people? As someone who's had to use the Oracle database and also Oracle Linux on servers, beats me. Also stuff like Oracle ADF and JDeveloper and JBoss/WildFly, no thank you. I seriously hope someone got bribed to choose Oracle cause it doesn't make sense otherwise, at least then they would have gotten something good out of it. The closest thing to an actual argument I've heard was wanting paid support - in which case let me introduce to KronisCo (which will be registered shortly) and if you only give me fat coffeurs of money, I will provide similar support for PostgreSQL with the added benefits of your developers not wanting to retire at 30. Like why would anyone pay for Oracle in the first place, when they can just collect that cheque themselves and freeload on battle-tested FOSS (or contribute back)? Seeing a software dev org just pass those sums to Oracle from their clients without trying to capture that seemed wild.
- nnevatie 2mo ago
  Ahhaha. JBoss, the glorified web-app server that booted for tens of minutes. It was the peak of Java-based over-engineering.
  - bzzzt 2mo ago
    And it's not even an Oracle product. If you want that from them you need WebLogic. To be fair, recent versions of JBoss/Wildfly removed a lot of the bloat and boot within seconds. Startup time is mostly due to application frameworks nowadays.
    - doubled112 2mo ago
      This conversation just dug some old nightmares out. In a past life, I used to be almost ecstatic when a client would choose Tomcat over WebLogic or WebSphere, or whatever abomination of an app server they standardized on.
inigyou 2mo ago
They don't need our business. They only need the large corporate clients who run on corruption and inertia.
bernawil 2mo ago
because the people that make these decisions receive kickbacks from them, obviously. Their whole philosophy revolves around introducing these trojan horses in orgs. Explains why it's mostly government orgs.

What I don't understand is why anyone with half a brain would even venture to touch Oracle with a ten foot pole given that they've had this reputation for at least the last 25 years. Why, people?

theideaofcoffee 2mo ago

Ass-covering. The same reason why most huge enterprises buy insane support contracts for every other piece of shitty software: support, and someone to blame when production goes pear-shaped. Because there’s no real management left anywhere, there’s no time to grow expertise internally and everyone just needs that hit of Risk Management (tm), they’ll go to whatever lengths to get it. Oracle is like the ultimate warm, fuzzy blanket where that fuzz is actually mold, it delivers the scared-shitless enterprises from having to think for themselves.

dearsiary7 2mo ago

Because my boss like golf courses and even more when oracle sales rep pays.

TimTheTinker 2mo ago
Wait, Oracle sales reps give decision-makers personal kickbacks for buying Oracle?? Stay classy Oracle. Such a banal depth of evil. Why hasn't this been outlawed? I guess companies that knowingly employ such managers deserve to lose whatever Oracle's legal team extracts out of them.
- xyzzy_plugh 2mo ago
  You've clearly never purchased enterprise software at scale before. Oracle doesn't do anything that everyone else isn't already doing. Dinners, drinks, bottles of scotch, tickets to baseball and football games, plane tickets to attend training sessions in conference rooms attached to nice beachside hotels, business lunches at strip clubs, Superbowl tickets, cruise tickets, wristwatches... Not to mention mugs, tshirts, water bottles and stickers. Everything is on the menu.
  - TimTheTinker 2mo ago
    I'm calling my senators and house rep. Holy crap.
    - kdheiwns 2mo ago
      Not sure why you're surprised. That's just how business/networking/capitalism works everywhere on earth and it's been like that since the dawn of civilization. And why would Congress stop is since they're all getting the same benefits and don't even hide it?
      - TimTheTinker 2mo ago
        I guess I thought integrity was still at least considered an ideal to strive for in the West.
        kdheiwns 2mo ago
        That imaginary integrity never existed. If anything, favors for favors are now less common than they used to be.
        inigyou 2mo ago
        That's just what they tell the peons, so the peons won't compete with them for the corruption opportunities.
        ekianjo 2mo ago
        why do you think politicians want to become politicians? so that they can get the gravy too
      - eru 2mo ago
        Well, nothing specific to capitalism here.
    - Bendy 2mo ago
      There is a scene in a French documentary in which a former Dassault boss displays his vintage wine collection as one of his many tools to ease arms supply deals with various nations. When the journalist asked him if it really works like this he responded, “Of course, because men are pigs!”
- smuhakg 2mo ago
  They've been charged multiple times for bribing foreign government officials. https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022-173 https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022-173 This is why corporate procurement in a large enterprise is so bureaucratic. If you have 20 layers of approval that's 20 people that need cocaine and prostitutes yet could blow the whistle.
  - walrus01 2mo ago
    > They've been charged multiple times for bribing foreign government officials. Maybe they've been hiring former SNC Lavalin executives?
  - preg_match 2mo ago
    One of the worst side-effects of corruption and cronyism isn't even the corruption part, it's the insane administrative cost it inevitably breeds in process in order to try to fix. This is largely why the US government is so inefficient. Our government agencies have been trained to outsource absolutely everything. A static site? No, you couldn't possibly hire one or two engineers to do that, you need a multi-million dollar contract! Well, when you do that, the corruption risk is through the roof. Now we mitigate with anti-corruption, anti-fraud checks out the fucking wazoo. That's expensive. And we're putting that expense ON TOP of the exorbitant contract fees.
- eru 2mo ago
  > Wait, Oracle sales reps give decision-makers personal kickbacks for buying Oracle?? When Oracle does it, it's a scandal. But when an airline gives people personal 'miles' for their business trips, it's business as usual.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Pretty much every business does this to acquire large corporate and government customers. Every customer acquisition will be weeks or months of in-person discussions over golf, expensive dinners, resort vacations, or the like.
- listenallyall 2mo ago
  How is it a kickback to invite someone to play golf? A kickback would be if he handed him a big check in the locker room. Take it easy dude, it's business, kickback or not certainly isn't "evil".
  - tsimionescu 2mo ago
    How is paying for someone to have fun with the intention that they will then do business with you not a kickback? Just because you're not getting cash doesn't mean it's not a bribe.
    - listenallyall 2mo ago
      It's a meeting, a sales pitch, that takes place on a golf course. No different than over a meal, or at a sporting event. A kickback, by definition, only happens after the deal is closed, the recipient of the funds "kicks back" some of the revenue (or his commission) to the decision maker. If hasn't progressed beyond "the intention that they will do business with you" then it can't be a kickback.
      - mietek 2mo ago
        Keep telling yourself that.
      - tsimionescu 2mo ago
        What happens here is that the buyer "kicks back" a fat contract to their sales buddy who took them to that great golf resort. Or, if the terminology is wrong, you can just say that the sales agent bribed the buyer with a golf trip in order to get the contract on better terms, to the detriment of they buyer's company. Either way, golf games paid for by people trying to sell something are obviously morally and ethically wrong, and would be extremely illegal if they happened with a government employee.
        listenallyall 2mo ago
        What happens when two salesmen both take the guy out for golf? Someone's getting stiffed, right? And it happens with government employees all the time, just a bit differently. The lobbyist is a member at Shinnecock Hills or some other private, prestigious golf course that costs $100,000+ to join. Then he invites the senator out, the "guest fee" is a nominal amount like $120, which he happily pays to play a round on a US Open quality course. Of course the senator charges his transportation and hotel to his office, paid out of campaign funds or something. Shit like this happens every single day, stop pretending to be so shocked or morally righteous.
csixty4 2mo ago
Mine liked steak dinners.

wolfi1 2mo ago

nobody has ever been fired for using Oracle

TimTheTinker 2mo ago
I'd fire someone for using Oracle. I'd put it in the employee handbook. I bet Oxide would too.
- trollbridge 2mo ago
  Oracle products (including VirtualBox and MySQL) are banned in our workplace as well. We do not want to deal with licensing nightmares because someone accidentally downloaded the JDK or the E1000 drivers for VBox.
- bdelmas 2mo ago
  I would too and I have declined jobs everywhere they used their tech and it was not because they had to. And even then, unless it’s like Google and such I am very reluctant. No thanks!

walrus01 2mo ago

I have mentally trained myself to do a text substitution, whenever I see "Oracle" in a forum on the Internet, such as here, I try to substitute it with "Larry Ellison Needs A Bigger Yacht".

the-smug-one 2mo ago
What? Why not "One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison"?
- walrus01 2mo ago
  We could also go with "Oh Really? A Contemptuous Larry Ellison"

KronisLV 2mo ago

> Why, people? As someone who's had to use the Oracle database and also Oracle Linux on servers, beats me. Also stuff like Oracle ADF and JDeveloper and JBoss/WildFly, no thank you. I seriously hope someone got bribed to choose Oracle cause it doesn't make sense otherwise, at least then they would have gotten something good out of it. The closest thing to an actual argument I've heard was wanting paid support - in which case let me introduce to KronisCo (which will be registered shortly) and if you only give me fat coffeurs of money, I will provide similar support for PostgreSQL with the added benefits of your developers not wanting to retire at 30. Like why would anyone pay for Oracle in the first place, when they can just collect that cheque themselves and freeload on battle-tested FOSS (or contribute back)? Seeing a software dev org just pass those sums to Oracle from their clients without trying to capture that seemed wild.

nnevatie 2mo ago
Ahhaha. JBoss, the glorified web-app server that booted for tens of minutes. It was the peak of Java-based over-engineering.
- bzzzt 2mo ago
  And it's not even an Oracle product. If you want that from them you need WebLogic. To be fair, recent versions of JBoss/Wildfly removed a lot of the bloat and boot within seconds. Startup time is mostly due to application frameworks nowadays.
  - doubled112 2mo ago
    This conversation just dug some old nightmares out. In a past life, I used to be almost ecstatic when a client would choose Tomcat over WebLogic or WebSphere, or whatever abomination of an app server they standardized on.

inigyou 2mo ago

They don't need our business. They only need the large corporate clients who run on corruption and inertia.

bernawil 2mo ago

because the people that make these decisions receive kickbacks from them, obviously. Their whole philosophy revolves around introducing these trojan horses in orgs. Explains why it's mostly government orgs.