Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is Oracle that much more evil than other big companies?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 54 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is Oracle that much more evil than other big companies?

#41

Post by jampekka »

darajava wrote: post #10
jampekka wrote: post #8

Sad how Microsoft doesn't get the reactions it deserves anymore. Probably the single most harmful entity to computing.

Why do you think so? I did think this too until about 6 years ago but with them basically buying all of open source and AI, I kind of can’t help but use and love the products they now own. What damage to they currently do?

I don't see buying all of open source and AI a good thing. What it did to OpenAI definitely isn't a good thing. For open source my prediction is good old EEE.

And even if those were positive, I'm still forced to use Outlook and Office and OneDrive and occasionally even Windows because they have so profoundly corrupted how computers are used.

Re: Ask HN: Is Oracle that much more evil than other big companies?

#42

Post by Dudester230602 »

darajava wrote: post #20
firebaze wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you post a few examples of what good they did to open source? Genuinely curious.

Typescript, vscode, npm, github and more https://opensource.microsoft.com/projects/ They also added a “Sponsor” button to Github which while I have mixed feelings about it, does help open source projects thrive.

TypeScript, NPM - doubling down on crappy language and rotten foundations. You could argue that at least they are helping to manage the damage to the industry.

VSCode - misspending money to prove JS can be used to build native apps? We did not say you "could not", we said you "should not".

GitHub - they just bought that, thanks for not ruining it I guess.

Re: Ask HN: Is Oracle that much more evil than other big companies?

#43

Post by jampekka »

outside1234 wrote: post #34
Nextgrid wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His comment has merit. Microsoft controls something like 90% of desktop computer marketshare and turned them into malicious adware & spyware platforms overnight.

Ok - but don't use that platform? I mean it is not like you can't switch to a Mac and avoid that whole ecosystem anymore.

Tell that to all the IT deparments in the world. And all the people that keep sending Office files. And the friends and relatives that nag you to fix their Windows crap yet again. Apple is of course even worse in many regard.

For myself I don't need Microsoft stuff. But sadly there are all these other people around.

Re: Ask HN: Is Oracle that much more evil than other big companies?

#44

Post by scarface_74 »

tux3 wrote: post #40
scarface_74 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely not true. A long time ago I was working for a smallish company and we were choosing between MSSQL and Oracle. Microsoft pricing was up front. Oracle is “call us and talk”. This immediately made Oracle a non starter. When I was at AWS, we could create all of the AWS accounts we wanted and do basically anything we wanted in internal accounts as long as it was tangentially work related or just to expe…

Oh, that makes sense to me. If you're a smallish company, you're not the target market. Not just Oracle, but any big cloud vendor won't lift a finger for smaller contracts. If you're a big company, your C suite will be inundated with slick advertising from Oracle, in airports, on MSNBC, in person via networking. If you're a big company, their sales people will call you, and then they'll find some problems from the to…

Anyone can go onto AWS and see pricing for anything. I got my start with AWS at a 60 person startup with standard Business support. They go out of their way for any company and their live support is top notch. They once found an obscure issue that took them two days and a support person recreating the issue.

Amazon takes “customer obsession” to the extreme. I saw that from the inside and outside.

Now as far as how they treat their employees. Let’s just say never meet your heroes…

Re: Ask HN: Is Oracle that much more evil than other big companies?

#45

Post by zx8080 »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #28

Oracle is known for being very aggressive with litigation and legal threats, exceptionally so even vs the other tech giants. On the other hand, I know an oracle dev that suffered a horrible accident and took two years to rehabilitate. Oracle kept him on paid leave that whole time despite it being unrelated to the workplace and past their usual policy. So based on that my understanding of them now is that they're more…

> Oracle kept him on paid leave that whole time

This is almost exclusively about the manager of that person. It's very rarely such facts speak about the company as a whole.

Re: Ask HN: Is Oracle that much more evil than other big companies?

#46

Post by rnd0 »

I'm guessing it depends on who you are. If you're small potatoes (a desktop user) then you literally don't exist to them. At least, I haven't heard any stories about them raking old grandmas over the coal for using the vb extention pack in their knitting group or whatever.

You do see that reaction to Microsoft -and it's justified. Moreover Microsoft does tend to impact the end user but even that aside...it's a rare comment section that doesn't mention things like "Embrace, extend, extinquish" or the AARD code or the Halloween Documents when the story involves MS.

Now, if you're a part of the demographic that Oracle targets; that's a different story, and probably a worse one at that.

Re: Ask HN: Is Oracle that much more evil than other big companies?

#47

Post by tux3 »

scarface_74 wrote: post #44
tux3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, that makes sense to me. If you're a smallish company, you're not the target market. Not just Oracle, but any big cloud vendor won't lift a finger for smaller contracts. If you're a big company, your C suite will be inundated with slick advertising from Oracle, in airports, on MSNBC, in person via networking. If you're a big company, their sales people will call you, and then they'll find some problems from the to…

Anyone can go onto AWS and see pricing for anything. I got my start with AWS at a 60 person startup with standard Business support. They go out of their way for any company and their live support is top notch. They once found an obscure issue that took them two days and a support person recreating the issue. Amazon takes “customer obsession” to the extreme. I saw that from the inside and outside. Now as far as how th…

That's fair. We've historically used GCP at $WORKPLACE, so I'm used to a much lighter level of customer support

GCP support people are believed to exist based on available evidence, but further research is required

Re: Ask HN: Is Oracle that much more evil than other big companies?

#48

Post by jampekka »

Dudester230602 wrote: post #42
darajava wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typescript, vscode, npm, github and more https://opensource.microsoft.com/projects/ They also added a “Sponsor” button to Github which while I have mixed feelings about it, does help open source projects thrive.

TypeScript, NPM - doubling down on crappy language and rotten foundations. You could argue that at least they are helping to manage the damage to the industry. VSCode - misspending money to prove JS can be used to build native apps? We did not say you "could not", we said you "should not". GitHub - they just bought that, thanks for not ruining it I guess.

Github, NPM have all the signs of EEE. For Github they already gave the misery of PAT and TOTP. Corporate hoops planned for NPM as well. Especially sad, as NPM is/was the best package/dependency management system ever created.

TypeScript and VScode are there of course to make all programming as horrible as it's on Windows.

Re: Ask HN: Is Oracle that much more evil than other big companies?

#50

Post by pixl97 »

bcantrill wrote: post #39

Unsurprisingly -- and as happens almost reflexively on any HN post involving Oracle -- my talk from LISA 2011[0] has already been cited here. I expanded on that in my OSCON 2015 talk[1], to which I would add this: thinking about Oracle as "evil" is really the wrong way of thinking about them; to think of them as diabolical is to infuse the place with a kind of humanity (if crooked) that it doesn't necessarily contain…

They aren't exactly evil... They are what happens when you maximize capitalism, and some people do consider that evil.
Post reply on HN