

Ask HN: Honestly, what's evil about Oracle? - TallGuyShort

I've been getting an "Oracle is evil" vibe lately (duh). I've brought it up with a few people, but it's always essentially come down to being in a band-wagon, or wanting free (as in beer) software. I respect the opinions on HN, and I have to believe there are better reasons than this, I just haven't heard them.<p>Personally, I know several people who worked there during the acquisition, and there's an overwhelming response of relief that their company isn't being run into the ground anymore. I've always had good experiences with Oracle's products and support, and I'm not aware of any free products that are no longer available (maybe I'm wrong?) Open-source software can still be branched if people don't like the politics (like LibreOffice).<p>As far as I can tell, Oracle is simply not going to spend money on things that it doesn't benefit from. It's a business, and they're not breaking any contracts or laws. Granted, their lawsuit against Google looks ridiculous, but that can't be all there is to this vibe.
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orangecat
Oracle is the archetype of "enterprisey": a massive convoluted platform that
costs a fortune and requires specialists to babysit, which businesses use
because many years ago there were no viable alternatives. They're much more
interested in milking their cash cow than innovating, which may very well be
the correct business decision, but it makes them unappealing to most hackers.
None of that makes them "evil", but it does make it easy to side against them
in the Google case, especially given the dislike for patent aggressors in
general.

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pepsi_can
I don't really know much about Oracle but from what I read their company
culture is not the kind of culture I'd work for.

For example the way they treated Gosling.

