

Larry Ellison's Oracle Started as a CIA Project - juanplusjuan
http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/larry-ellisons-oracle-started-as-a-cia-project-1636592238/+sambiddle

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dthal
Yet another datapoint on Silicon Valley's collective amnesia about the role
that government spending had in getting our industry off the ground.

On a different note, I loved this part: _And Ellison has worked tirelessly to
build that all-seeing database, suggesting that he had even given away for
free much of the tech necessary for such infrastructure. He 'd only charge the
government for additional services and maintenance of the systems, of course._
Any DB company could perfectly well give away its software to sell the
services and maintenance (under a mini-monopoly due to vendor lock-in). I
suspect the reason why they don't is just to distract the customer from where
the money is really made.

