Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Yup, this is the concern. Having been kindly asked by Oracle to remove virtualbox extensions, this sort of gotcha/conditional pricing feels dangerous



The big thing for me is the question of the future: they say they currently won't be predatory about it[1] and I have no reason to doubt that the people saying that are being completely honest, but we don't know who will be working there in the future or where the next acquisition/merger will take them.

Without a contract, it's hard to disagree with the policy types who are going to ask what protects the organization if that happens. Once you go down this path even a little, the barriers to entry at large organizations go up since you have to look at it from the perspective of both the upfront cost and possible future cost / off-ramps.

1. https://twitter.com/scottcjohnston/status/143272649295845376...


Docker is a company that won’t exist in a few years, so a promise of leniency now means nothing.

When they are merged into some other big company, that company will look to milk the cow by going after license compliance. It happens every time.


My personal guess was that they get eaten by Microsoft and Docker will be integrated more deeply with VS (Code) and GitHub.


Some years back I tried to pay the $50 for the VBox extensions - small company and I was the only user. They were very confused, almost like they couldn’t understand that I really wanted to pay for something that I judged good value for the money.

They ended up telling me to forget about it.

I guess that perhaps they only want to target large businesses.


How Oracle discovered you're using it?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: