
Oracle VP: Data would be safer if most OSS distributed databases didn't exist - miles
https://twitter.com/matthewokeefe1/status/1226945620801413120
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heybrendan
When I read content like this, I can't help but be reminded of Bryan
Cantrill's talk at USENIX entitled "Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of
illumos" from 2011 [1].

Some personal favorites:

> You actually don't need to be open-minded about Oracle. You are wasting the
> openness of your mind.

> What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been
> no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle.

> You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You
> don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you
> stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think
> "oh, the lawnmower hates me". The lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you,
> the lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't
> fall into that trap about Oracle. [...] The lawnmower can't have empathy.

[1] [https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2040](https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2040)

~~~
thunderbong
I think this is true for all corporations. In my opinion, all corporations are
driven by the bottom line, not by emotions.

~~~
goldenkey
It's not. Tesla is ran by a pretty awesome guy. So are many other companies.
Some visions happen to be compatible with ethics. When one's brand is backed
by ethics, investors know what they are getting into. A lot of mountaineering
companies and outback companies are actually like that.

~~~
kthejoker2
Umm Tesla has plenty of "soulless corporation" going on - again, quit
anthropomorphizing minmax optimization engines.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/13/tesla-
wor...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/13/tesla-workers-pay-
price-elon-musk-failed-promises)

[https://www.revealnews.org/blog/a-users-guide-to-teslas-
work...](https://www.revealnews.org/blog/a-users-guide-to-teslas-worker-
safety-problems/)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-factory-workers-
detail...](https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-factory-workers-detail-
grueling-conditions-fremont-2017-5)

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robert_foss
You really can trust Oracle to be the most disgusting version of a corporation
given any set of circumstances. It's literally amazing, they're like
clockwork.

~~~
hinkley
I can easily amuse myself by recalling the Star Trek episode where all the
evil twins had goatees, and wondering where Larry’s good twin is now.

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kev009
Most economy scale transactional stuff is on things not a lot of people have
experience with these days like TPF, or CICS and VSAM and to some extent DB2.
Oracle is more of a "mid range" DB for financial workloads and wouldn't be
comparatively hard to replace with, say, postgres, as many companies have.

~~~
inshadows
Could you shed some light on the sector and infrastructure where TPF, CICS and
VASM are used? I've never heard of it and had to google it all[1]. What
exactly do you mean by "economy scale transactional stuff"? Is something like
central bank clearing house?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_Processing_Facilit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_Processing_Facility)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Storage_Access_Method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Storage_Access_Method)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CICS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CICS)

~~~
kev009
I might be able to but you are already on your way, branch off the references
links there and look at open source (in the intelligence sense) of places like
resumes and linkedin to see who is using what. Some permutation is used at the
nucleus of card networks like visa, ACH, most public stock exchanges, and a
lot of other financial instrument markets, as well as the systems of record
for some of the largest banks and governments.

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ibudiallo
In 2017 big blue had decided enough is enough. Let's move to those hip new
technologies like, php and MySQl. Let's do angular too!

It was a small simple application. It took no longer than a week to migrate to
mysql. Unfortunately, we had a long term contract with Oracle. It didn't
matter that we weren't using their db anymore, we still had 10 more years to
go.

The strength of the Oracles and IBMs of the world is not in technology. It's
in sales.

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fiberoptick
The FOSS community would be a lot safer if Oracle didn't exist.

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kick
Sometimes I wonder about the type of people who willingly choose to work at
Oracle. Unsurprisingly, this is Oracle's best.

I wonder what Oracle's doing to get this sort of loyalty; not many employees
are willing to turn their personal twitter accounts into ad space.

~~~
pm90
I didn’t want to rush to judgement so I took a look at his other tweets. I
think this person may have never actually been in situations where a decision
had to be made between different db options. Such people come into technology
in the world of big corps and drink the kool aid; different technologies are
more of a tribal or a popularity contest rather than a genuine technical
assessment. Never take these people seriously.

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tejtm
Wake me up when they are disavowing/discontinuing "owning" mysql.

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xemoka
And it was removed. Wayback caught it:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200216050450/https://twitter.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200216050450/https://twitter.com/matthewokeefe1/status/1226945620801413120)

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PaywallBuster
They mention distributed databases, not traditional RDBMS.

Elastic databases have been at the source of countless leaks, this tweet
doesn't seem out of place.

~~~
robbyt
Elastic databases have been the source of leaks because of incompetency of the
people deploying it, not because of its FOSS license.

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dfsdfklgjljg
There are good OSS databases like Postres and MariaDB, and there's also crap
like Mongo.

Even though there are OSS databases better than Oracle, it could be true that
data on OSS databases might be safer on Oracle on average.

Also, even though Oracle engages in horrible unethical business practices, I
hear that their database product isn't bad.

~~~
liability
How many more businesses, if financially strained by Oracle licensing fees,
would be tempted to sell data about their users to make up the difference?

~~~
pm90
I have to sell user data because my dB licensing fees are too high.... is one
hell of a take. Has that happened like ever?

~~~
liability
It's a big world. A lot of businesses are only marginally viable already, and
a lot of business owners are only marginally ethical. Many already sell user
data. I think it likely that squeezing such businesses even harder from the
top might have negative consequences for the people at the bottom.

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BrandoElFollito
That Oracle VP should explain why their software puts a short limit on the
length of the password (in PeopleSoft).

Whenever I see that someone limits the length of the password I know that
problems are nearby.

This software is disheartening.

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loukrazy
You would have less leaks with Oracle because you would not be able to afford
the database in the first place. Can’t leak anything if it’s not stored

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hinkley
It’s easier to secure things when there are less of them to keep track of.
They’re not wrong. Or not even wrong? One of those.

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shmerl
Yeah, sure. Keep dreaming Oracle, keep dreaming. World would be much better
place without such greedy and nasty companies.

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bowyakka
Scott/tiger

~~~
smitty1e
dual

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goatinaboat
To be fair, data _would_ be safer if MongoDB didn’t exist. Then again maybe
it’s better to have all the people working on it in one place so they can be
avoided all together.

