
Why I Left Oracle – A Confession - cronjobber
http://blog.rahmannet.net/2016/03/why-i-left-oracle.html
======
MrTonyD
I was a Product Manager at Oracle when we decided to integrate Java. It seemed
like an odd decision to those outside Oracle, but at the highest levels in
Oracle we were circulating a Microsoft internal presentation about how
Microsoft was going to use the dominance of Visual Studio to defeat
competitors across the application space. So Oracle had no choice except to
support Java as the alternative to Visual Studio. So Java and all Open Source
support were really done only to the extent which self-interest demanded. We
had floors of kernel engineers fixing Linux to make it work (it was barely
functional back then.) And we coordinated with HP, IBM, Sun, Red Hat, and
others so that they would encourage and pay their engineers to support Open
Source. The idea that Open Source is somehow separate from business and market
forces ignores its history. And the idea that Open Source is always positive
is equally absurd. I've been working in open source for decades now, and the
big winners are often the same rich companies which are extracting the wealth
of our society - as they get software for free while the engineers provide
work without getting the true "fruits of their labor". Does it make sense for
multi-billionaires to get this software for free? Really, the Open Source idea
is very messed up in an economy with distinct winners and losers.

~~~
toyg
As a fellow ex-Oracle (although a coalface support minion coming through an
acquisition), and with all due respect, I downvoted your comment because it
looks like a bit of an incoherent rant with no apparent link to the post.

What Rhaman is saying is: the wide Java portfolio is dying because people are
not making enough waves around the JCP to keep Oracle on the straight and
narrow. Nothing to do with opensource, the JCP is a very different project
from traditional opensource development.

The JRE has never been a "real" open source project, but rather a proprietary
system that opened up enough to develop a caring community. The problem is
that, at the moment, the interests of Java's owner are not aligned with the
interests of such community, and not enough people seem to care.

This has nothing to do with Java being "open source" or not; in fact, a real
OSS project would happily fork at this point (as it happened with OpenOffice),
but the Java community cannot really do it. It seems pointless to debate the
merits of OSS in a situation where there is no OSS; it's like saying "We
supported Windows out of self-interest; but let's talk about the pros and cons
of opensource...".

~~~
pron
> The JRE has never been a "real" open source project

What does that mean? Compare Java to other open source projects of similar
magnitude (and there aren't many; maybe only Linux, which is actually bigger).
Linux is even more exclusive than OpenJDK, and just like Linux, companies with
appropriate resources often make changes to the software even if those changes
aren't contributed back (or contributed but not merged).

> and not enough people seem to care

People will care once many start to actually feel it. Oracle's interests are
probably not aligned with mine, and may or may not be a cause for concern for
me, but so far Oracle's _actions_ wrt OpenJDK don't harm me at all. The
investment in the platform feels to have only grown in the past few years.

> but the Java community cannot really do it

Why not? I think it most certainly _can_ , but at this point there's not
enough motivation to do it.

~~~
toyg
Look at what Oracle is doing to Google for the sin of refusing the JCP
process. Do you think they wouldn't do the same against any Java fork with a
realistic chance of supplanting their implementation? The details are not
important, they'll throw the book at you and find something that sticks.

The current situation (OpenJDK open but not a realistic choice in most
production deployments; Oracle JDK/JRE remaining as de-facto gold standard; a
process that forces strict compatibility tests on any competitor) can be fine
from a certain point of view, but in practice it means that Java is _not_ a
traditional community-led OSS program. Rather, it's a program where the OSS
community helps a company improve their software. RedHat is not the only Linux
build with significant marketshare, and I won't get sued if I write a
different POSIX system.

 _> at this point there's not enough motivation to do it._

No there isn't, that's what Rhaman is saying. But what he's also implying is
that the direction of travel has changed inside Oracle, and people outside do
not seem to realize it. IMHO it's fairly obvious where things are going
(you'll stop "installing Java", and only develop and deploy in the Oracle
cloud or similar Oracle-sanctioned environments).

~~~
lovelearning
Can you elaborate on why OpenJDK is not suitable for production deployments? I
thought Oracle's JDK/JRE were based on OpenJDK's, with only minor changes.

~~~
toyg
Obviously it varies depending on requirements, but my experience is that
openjdk tends to be a crashfest and/or end up being incompatible with a lot of
stuff out there. The Oracle JDK/JRE invariably Just Works. It might be all a
cargo-cult phenomenon (i.e. devs still testing only with Oracle builds out of
tradition etc etc), it might be that Oracle have fabulous build tools not seen
elsewhere, I honestly don't know; this is just what I see.

~~~
benjaminjackman
I used to experience random crashes with the OpenJDK several years ago, but
haven't noticed that recently. Are you still seeing those issues or did you
give up some time ago based on the aforementioned crashfest and haven't tried
it in the last couple years?

~~~
LaSombra
One thing about OpenJDK is that the debug symbols are freely available so you
can try and create a core dump and analyse why the JVM crashed. You can't do
that with Oracle's or IBM's JDK AFAIK.

------
bitwize
_Many people seem to have an impression of Oracle as a company full of
corporate drones. This is far from the truth. I wasn 't, Cameron wasn't and we
are very far from being alone._

That may be true, but if you're not generating revenue for Oracle, you will be
fired and replaced with a lawyer who can at least look for a new IP angle to
sue over, or a new way to nickel-and-dime existing customers to extract more
license fees. (Coming to Java 10: Garbage Collector Licensing. Beginning with
Java 10, Oracle will assess a fixed fee for each byte of memory reclaimed by
the Oracle JRE garbage collector. Contact your Oracle sales representative for
pricing details.)

~~~
needusername
I always thought that Cameron and Reza didn't present a very balanced view.
Which is OK if you're hired for marketing as long as you don't claim you're
not a corporate drone.

Two examples: Reza is a famous spring hater and much of his writing can be
summarised as "Java EE rocks, Spring sucks". Which is fine if you're hired to
sell Java EE. Which is fine, just don't claim otherwise.

Cameron's view on TCK licensing was also very one sided and uncompromising. In
every JCP meeting the topic of TCK licensing pops up. Everybody except Oracle
agrees on the subject. Everybody has the same position Oracle had before the
Sun acquisition. I was at a JCP meeting when the whole panel (all JCP members)
agreed on TCK licensing and Cameron from the audience simply said "no". Then
he said something like "if you open source a TCK that makes the TCK worthless
because anybody can change anything". Totally ignoring the fact that the best
TCK out there (the CDI TCK) is open source. Even if that was an issue there
would be fixes for this like trade marking the TCK like Mozilla does with
Firefox.

Again if you're hired to wield the power of the TCK against Apache Harmony for
whatever political reason that's fine. Just don't claim you're not a corporate
drone.

------
kumarm
I knew Cameron from 15 years back. Always helpful and very down to earth
person. I am surprised he stayed at Oracle that long.

He was very active in BEA Weblogic Forums/usergroups. He would answer most
questions with helpful answers. When he started building Coherence (which was
sold to Oracle and hence ended up at Oracle) he added Coherence link to his
signature while answering questions or trouble shootings other users problems.
Pretty soon most JavaEE developers became aware of Coherence with that single
trick.

------
kzhahou
What is it that compels people to write these posts? I remember when you'd
make some personal decision, and just tell friends if they happened to ask
why.

~~~
kelukelugames
I'm in the middle of writing one because I think it will help both the company
and other start ups. The TLDR is an HR rep left because she was facing a
hostile work environment. So what hope did the rest of us have? It's an appeal
for startups to train their managers better.

~~~
kzhahou
Are you gonna send it to their CEO privately, or air a bunch of dirty laundry
in public?

~~~
kelukelugames
Well I did email the CEO when I left and he was like that's nice. There isn't
any dirty laundry. I just want to make the case for better training,
especially since my friends continue to complain to me after I left.

~~~
gtirloni
It might be useful to ask if it's something new in the HR guidebook or a new
trend you're seeing in your area.

~~~
kelukelugames
They did update the employee conduct when I first complained about it.
Previously it just said, "don't watch porn at work." I'm exaggerating. But
barely. I want to laugh and I want to cry.

------
npalli
What exactly is the reason for leaving Oracle? Seems like an exec. at Oracle,
Cameron was forced out. OK. Not sure what the background on the departure is.
Everyone knows Oracle is evil. So that can't be it. Is there some reading
between the lines here? Maybe somebody embedded in the Java ecosystem can shed
light.

~~~
toyg
Look at the list of stuff his skepticism "extends to" and see what is missing.
Hint: web apps. That's because Oracle is betting the farm on "cloud services",
and a few of their offerings are based on the concept of containerized java
apps running on the Oracle cloud. That alone will survive; everything else is
fair game. Anything on-premise, including the JRE, are going to be basically
ignored from now on.

I work in a different Oracle niche and the message is the same: nothing
matters but cloud. If a product can be moved to the cloud, good; if it can't,
it will be killed. On-premise versions are pretty much all in legacy-mode,
getting patches that pay lip-service to the idea of hybrid setups, but 90% of
development resources are busy on cloud-related stuff.

Somehow, the current Oracle leadership believes they should become "AWS for
the enterprise", and in traditional Oracle style, they _will_ pull all stops
(and cut all corners) to get there. If you don't like it, that's the door.
"Java everywhere" advocates are now surplus to requirements.

~~~
X-Istence
I wouldn't want the vendor lock-in that comes with Oracle's "AWS".

There has been a lot of teeth gritting over how locked into AWS certain parts
of a customers company has become, using their API's, their services, and with
no real way to move away if anything ever happened.

~~~
rodgerd
> I wouldn't want the vendor lock-in that comes with Oracle's "AWS".

AWS has already perfected vendor lock-in, so I doubt Oracle can make it much
worse, beyond their normal trick of de-certifying their products on competing
platforms.

------
itaysk
Touching story, but... Why did he leave oracle?

~~~
Gratsby
I re-read the whole thing, then went looking for a page 2. Clearly, his future
isn't in journalism.

~~~
gunnihinn
The top 8 reasons why no one's future is in journalism! Number 5 will shock
you!

------
geodel
There is tremendous activity in OpenJDK projects which means Oracle is finally
concentrating on core technology. So many of these projects seems to directly
help developers as compare to JavaEE stuff which is mostly targeted for
vendors peddling there gigabytes size application servers. I have had
misfortune of using those products. Now I am much happier using Core Java /
servlets with tomcat.

A possible fallout of Oracle focussing on core Java and cutting down on JavaEE
monstrosity is that all those pattern laden enterprise
architect/astronauts/evangelists seems less in demand at least at Oracle. I
may not be biggest fan of Oracle but I think in case of evangelist types
leaving Oracle is good thing.

------
exabrial
Dude, Reza is a bamf. I've attended many of his talks. Guy had a hard job, and
he took flak from all sides. Good luck buddy!

------
goldenkey
Hmm thats similar to why I left Amazon. I was tasked with mundane tasks like
localizing strings for huge marketing faq pages. I wrote scripts to give the
900 odd strings numerical locale ids. But my manager who all my code had to
pass through for code review wanted individually described and named ids. For
what other reason than he was a corporate drone with Java abstractions for
factories of factories of DatabaseQueryCreator that invoked
DatabaseQueryBuilder etc etc I do not know. I will never work for another corp
where I dont feel like a magician in terms of programming and tooling
efficiency. It was absolutely dreadful and loathing to march to my death as a
creative and intellectual. Fuck drone work and fuck drone managers and
executives who try to serve it up only because they hate themselves too much
to embrace the beauty of the discipline of hip and efficient software
engineering

------
maxlybbert
So, Java doesn't live up to the hype?

------
PhantomGremlin
Humans love mental shortcuts. E.g. Taibbi has forever tagged Goldman Sachs as
"The Vampire Squid". Years ago somebody Google bombed Microsoft as "more evil
than Satan himself". And Bush became "miserable failure".

So, what of Oracle? I'm drawing a blank, but that's probably because I don't
frequently interact with Oracle or with its products.

Anyone?

~~~
Scuds
From the article "Many people seem to have an impression of Oracle as a
company full of corporate drones. This is far from the truth."

But IMO Oracle's reputation is a portfolio of overarchitected overpriced
enterprise products that encourage lock-in.

------
overgard
I'm nitpicking a bit, but this stood out to me as a good example of why I've
never wanted to be part of Java-land:

> He helped pioneer one of the most successful pieces of enterprise
> infrastructure that has stood the test of time. _Yet he is humble enough to
> still code_

I mean, doesn't coding being perceived as a "humble" job he's lowering himself
to really say it all? It's rarely explicitly said, but coding is considered a
low status activity in those spheres. That's why I avoid Java work. Other
languages have cultures that respect the craft, rather than viewing it as
something you grow out of.

~~~
wrong_variable
Programmers get no respect - and its our own fault.

The computing industry is directly responsible for 1/3 of global GDP in 2016.

Its time that this is reflected in our paycheck.

~~~
exolymph
Keep in mind that code is not useful or economically impactful without
business and community management surrounding it.

~~~
overgard
I think that's demonstrably untrue -- open source and free software has had a
massive economic and cultural impact with precious little of that originating
from the involvement of business people or community leaders. (For instance,
the GNU project or the linux kernel -- not to mention how many commercial
products must use zlib). Business support almost always comes after the value
has been created.

~~~
exolymph
I wrote a blog post responding to this:
[http://sonyaellenmann.com/2016/03/middlemen-are-crucial-
open...](http://sonyaellenmann.com/2016/03/middlemen-are-crucial-open-source-
software-economic-growth.html)

