
Oracle Tells White House: Stop Hiring Silicon Valley People and Ditch Open Source - davidgerard
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170930/00522238319/oracle-tells-white-house-stop-hiring-silicon-valley-people-ditch-open-source.shtml
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lloydde
Relevant discussion from yesterday on source Oracle letter
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008)

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jondubois
Over the past 15 years as a software engineer I haven't used any Oracle
product... Except maybe Java and MySQL; but that was mostly before they were
bought by Oracle.

Oracle is a company whose survival is based almost entirely on its legacy
software and deep ties to government. It's surprising that their stock price
has been going up over the past 10 years.

The government would definitely function better if it started using open
source software.

For a long time, big companies like Microsoft and Oracle would spread lies
about open source; claiming that it is inherently inferior to commercial
software - Yet if you look at the vast majority of tech unicorns these days,
practically all of them use open source software at their core. The proof that
open source is superior is not hard to find and yet it seems that companies
like Oracle are still playing the same old game of trying to fudge the facts.

I'm worried that the next wave of propaganda will be around cloud services.
Big companies like Amazon will get their hooks into government and start
spreading lies about how cloud services are better than open source
containerized/orchestrated solutions... Then after 20 years this will again be
proven to have been a lie... And the cycle of deceptive lobbying will repeat.

~~~
astockwell
Not to worry, the aging executives in big corps/government are already well
entrenched in the belief that "all of AWS is insecure ... because remember
company xyz got breached on AWS..." referring of course to someone putting
user data in public, unsecured S3 buckets. Will be a while yet before they
start eating the lunch that cloud providers are peddling.

~~~
samfriedman
Actually, AWS offers a government-targeted region specifically to address data
escape concerns [0]. Not classified-secure, but fine for ITAR stuff.
Definitely not something I expected to exist.

[0] [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/govcloud-
us/latest/UserGuide/what...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/govcloud-
us/latest/UserGuide/whatis.html)

~~~
astockwell
Their offerings are certainly impressive when you (or your leadership) are
willing to look. Most of their flagship offerings are also HIPAA certified (or
can be upgraded to such).

~~~
dragonwriter
HIPAA certification isn't legally meaningful (once the government actually
publishes it's certification requirement and standards, certification to those
standards _will_ be legally meaningful, and one hopes also substantive; right
now it's just throw some money at some firm whose entire business model is
issuing legally-meaningless certifications that the buyer can use in
promotion.)

The legally-meaningful thing is that they are willing to sign a HIPAA BAA and
accept responsibility, not certification.

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kstrauser
While I have my opinions on Oracle, I don't have any insight into their
corporate health. Were I an investor, though, things like this would alarm me
greatly. It comes across very much like "we can no longer compete on any
remotely level playing field and need the law to prop us up." Coupled with
statements about their cloud services that are outright delusional (for
example, [http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-on-oracle-
cloud...](http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-on-oracle-cloud-and-
amazon-web-services-2016-9)), I get the impression that they're struggling
mightily. What's the mood really like inside Oracle these days?

~~~
Clubber
It's difficult to compete with free, even if (and I'm not saying it is) the
free version is substandard. I'm sure the federal government is budget
conscious with the current administration.

~~~
kristopolous
ah but you forgot their first priority which is to coddle the rich and
subsidize those who can pay for $250,000 fundraising dinners.

You know, like that one from last week,
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-25/trump-
din...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-25/trump-dinner-at-
nyc-s-le-cirque-seeks-up-to-250-000-per-couple)

~~~
jlarocco
As much as I dislike Trump, that's not unique to his administration.

~~~
kristopolous
It's the way the world works and it's been around long enough that even the
Romans and Egyptians complained about it.

Most post-industrial countries have concluded they need fairly strict controls
on how power and money co-mingle.

But the teaching of how power and money works and corrupts is so abysmal in
the US that many are miraculously continually surprised every time they see
it.

If Hillary or Bernie or even Jill Stein had won, this would still be true.
It's not about the person. Laws, enforcement and diligence is needed here.
Democracy doesn't come with an autopilot.

------
Top19
Worked at Oracle for 6 years. IMO the company is incredibly authentic. Cares
about a lot about making money for Larry, doesn’t care that much about the
customer, etc. Always had this “you always know where they stand feel”. It’s
kind of sad that today these are how good traits after years of “be
authentic!” and “find your passion” sermons.

Contrast this will the duopoly of Facebook and Google. Robbing the world blind
while also wanting credit to be the “good guys” and who totally “aren’t evil”.

FWIW Oracle employs 150,000 people at about a 150 B market cap. Facebook
employs 17,000 people at a 450 B market cap.

Oracle is bad in many ways, but it’s slowness and inefficiency does not
represent a threat to global democracy and stability like Google and Facebook
do.

ALSO: Oracle has hired about 15,000 liberal arts graduates over the last 4
years as part of their “Class Of” program. Many of these people, and I worked
with them, would not be in the middle-class today if it weren’t for Oracle
considering their degrees/background. Program has had mixed success, but in a
time when all companies either want a CS degree of 3-5 years work experience,
I’ve never forgotten what an opportunity Oracle offered those people.

~~~
selimthegrim
Those liberal arts graduates were part of running the Cover Oregon project
into the ground. I know. I met them.

~~~
tc7
Tangential: I just read the wikipedia page on this
[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon#Website_failure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon#Website_failure)].
Is there any more in-depth information available about what went wrong on this
project (or others like it)?

I'd love to read a post-mortem, or some technical explanation of what goes
wrong on projects like these. Does the code just not work? Is everyone
purposely just billing time and milking the contract, or does it start with
competent analysts and developers trying to deliver working software? And if
so, how does it get from there to here? Is this a typical gov contract thing
that I've just not seen by working private sector?

If anyone has any resources on this sort of thing, I'd love to see them.

~~~
selimthegrim
They were hiring anyone who could write a coherent English sentence to fill
out a Gantt chart and ride herd on the programmers, no systems integration
experience necessary.

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jasonmp85
Yes, clearly Oracle should get all the contracts…
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon#Website_failure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Oregon#Website_failure)

~~~
selimthegrim
Oracle was hiring anyone with a BS to manage their programmers towards the end
of that - no technical experience required.

------
the_common_man
I will be a contrarian but why is this a big deal? Most of the startup I know
use:

* Gmail, Google apps

* Dropbox

* Slack

* GitHub

* Zendesk, Intercom, Salesforce or whatever

All of them are closed source. There is a lot of truth in the fact that one
can only 'rely' on closed source products for non-infrastructure software.
Only developers use open source products as such. Happy to be given counter
examples.

~~~
eduren
While I do see the point you're making, I would like to counter by saying that
every product you listed likely is built with open-source components.

Oracle doesn't want to compete with Slack, it wants Slack (and others) to be
on Oracle cloud/databases.

~~~
peapicker
Ummm, Oracle isn't competing with Slack, Oracle is paying Slack -- because
Oracle is a Slack user... and Slack runs on AWS... (
[https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-
studies/slack/](https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/slack/) )

See the logos under "More companies who love Slack" on the page:

[https://slack.com/customer-stories](https://slack.com/customer-stories)

------
mrweasel
Without Open Source software what are they recommend running Oracle software
on, now that they practically killed of Solaris? Oracle on Windows?

~~~
yellowapple
Oracle still has its own RHEL-based Linux distro last I checked. It'd probably
just keep peddling that.

------
bdamm
A sign of a company in the early throes of death.

If Oracle really wants to compete it would start by reducing the prices of its
commodity products.

~~~
jiggliemon
The commodity products are cheaper than the competition.

~~~
bdamm
Only if you consider MySQL an Oracle product. But I don't think that's really
where their making their money.

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amorphid
Once you ditch all your open source, you run your Oracle software in the
cloud. And by cloud, Larry Ellison means that physical Oracle appliance
attached to a network in your data center. [1]

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20170328233007/https://www.forbe...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170328233007/https://www.forbes.com/2009/09/22/oracle-
zander-sun-intelligent-technology-ellison.html)

------
wmf
Discussion from yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008)

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gleenn
TFA mentions 18F and USDS as initiatives to get more tech savvy people into
gov roles. I also wanted to point out Code for America which does things in
very much the same vein: get talented engineers and product folks into
government funded software projects for the betterment of everyone. They're an
awesome group of dedicated people too!

------
fusiongyro
How likely is this message to be taken seriously?

~~~
sidlls
Hopefully, for the part about stop hiring from SV, very seriously. I would
prefer government systems be engineered by people who don't think engineering
is just a glorified senior CS project.

~~~
cycrutchfield
I wasn't aware that geography determined that sort of thing.

~~~
sidlls
It doesn't. It's just coincidence. In the SV there is a lot of emphasis on
academic CS trivia for "engineering" roles. It's caused by many things:
(im)maturity of the field, of the people who go into it, and the glut of CS
grads, many (if not most) who think they're mathematicians while they work on
glorified CRUD and ad-publishing apps.

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cwkoss
Short Oracle. Dying company with outdated tech and business plan. They haven't
created real value in a decade.

~~~
thyrsus
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

The only shorts for which I've ever been rich enough are in clothing stores -
and my comforts extend beyond my clothing.

~~~
cwkoss
$48.91 today, lets see how well my comment ages :-D

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Crontab
Fuck I hate Oracle. I hope the whole thing burns.

~~~
sctb
This is not on topic for Hacker News.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

