Oracle is set to repeat the trajectory of SCO. Their primary product (the Oracle DB engine) is being displaced by the NoSQL and things like Postgres. The "next generation" of developers equals SQL engines with "old and bad", and when forced, it ends up with Postgres anyway.
Oracle used to survive in significant part by the support of the "database administrators" class. This layer of support is also becoming thinner and older.
There's essentially no way forward for Oracle. They can use hostage tactics to squeeze money out of exiting customers for a few more years, but otherwise they are irrelevant in the tech landscape.
Except for Java, that is. The current tech is powered by Linux and there isn't really anything as big as Java on Linux. Python has been pretty significant and Go is making inroads, but the default is all Java. It is going to be interesting to watch how this will play out.
> The "next generation" of developers equals SQL engines with "old and bad"
I think that what you mean is:
- they don't understand the relational model
- they don't understand the tradeoffs of ACID vs BASE
- they never bothered to actually learn SQL
- they *think* that they have "big data"
Don't get me wrong - there are compelling use cases for, and decent products for, every class of non-relational database.
But there's nothing out there that can handle the general use case like an RDBMS.
Anybody who doesn't understand that isn't qualified to be making organization-wide decisions.
Basically, instead of innovating, or as the hip kids nowadays say, "pivoting", they just want to make easy money with stupid copyright claims and harmful tactics.
I find this strategy extremely toxic and malicious. Google may do a lot of stupid things, and people often make fun of their "don't be evil" motto, but let's be honest, the shit Oracle keeps pulling here over and over is the real definition of evil.
It's purely for profit and doesn't help in anyway to advance technology or humankind.
This layer of support is also becoming thinner and older.
It's not about age(ism) it's that Oracle stabbed them in the back by pushing cloud over on-prem where these guys (and gals) were employed. Now Oracle's biggest supporters are re-skilling to Postgres et al and stopped recommending Oracle to their organisations...
I wouldn't count Oracle out just yet. They're still much bigger than SCO or its predecessors ever were. They're also under the same management that built the company up from nothing, whereas SCO was a new management team that took over Caldera and was trying to pivot them to the product they'd just bought from the former Santa Cruz Operation, had no idea what they were doing, and eventually settled on litigation as a business model.
(SCO, amazingly, is still continuing its litigation, despite having no products, employees, or assets remaining. Oral arguments on probably-the-last-appeal are March 22 in Denver.)
All of the largest corporations in the world run on financial or ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle financials, Microsoft Dynamics etc., which sit on top of relational databases.
While in the SV start-up world it may seem like NoSQL is taking over, the Enterprise database market is massive, and replacing the relational databases behind corporate ERP systems with NoSQL based solutions, (to the extent that is even possible/wise), will be a long time coming.
Oracle has a giant footprint in a huge number of organizations across multiple industries. Love them or hate them, (and right now there is good reason to hate then), they are not going away anytime soon, and calling them "irrelevant in the tech landscape" seems premature/myopic given their massive install base and influence in the corporate/enterprise IT space.
Oracle has a perfectly good business model which doesn't rely on OracleDB at all: they buy vertical enterprise software companies and then milk their customers.
Don't forget Amazon Aurora, and Redshift. With the number of big name customers AWS, these products are the most scary to direct enterprise Oracle DB. Though the smaller and new tech giants of tomorrow will probably be running your Postgres and MySQLs as you mention
>> Their primary product (the Oracle DB engine) is being displaced by the NoSQL and things like Postgres.
I am not sure about the NoSQL part. I see it as more and more companies providing data access to different most-definitely-SQL databases other than Oracle. Postgres even has a migration page: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Oracle_to_Postgres_Conversi...
You may not like Oracle, but I bet they'll be around, thriving for decades.. Sure the Oracle DB is being replaced somewhat by other technologies and a shifting market to SaaS, but they are transforming the company rapidly and acquiring a very impressive and diverse portfolio of companies and starting to make large dents in the SaaS market:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Oracle
Although Oracle denied they bought Sun just to sue Google you have to wonder since they are claiming "billions" in damages and only paid $7.4 billion after IBM dropped their $7.0 billion bid.
This purchase was such a seminal moment for the industry you have to wonder what an alternative history would look like if say IBM or Google made the purchase not to mention some dark horses like Amazon or Red hat.
I wish intent and end result counted more strongly. Andoid's compatibility isn't transitive: once code goes through the Android build pipeline to produce an Android Application it cannot be meaningfully used in the context of Oracle Java; it's a one-way transformation to remain "talent-compatible" with a large pool of Java developers and reuse the base of Java libraries.
Projects like OpenJDK and WINE are efforts to provide an alternate execution environment for code that is mutually beneficial to the ecosystem, although perhaps not the wallets of the original owner. A commercial venture ought to qualify here if the intent is to compete on equal footing -- code targeting OpenJDK can run unmodified on Oracle Java, code targeting WINE can run unmodified on Win32, thereby not limiting the original creator's rights.
However, Android Apps contain unrelated public APIs as part of the exported code, and a full packaged Android App cannot meaningfully run on Oracle JDK, despite portions of the standard library looking and behaving alike. This fragments the ecosystem and essentially allows Android to benefit from the works of the Java rightholders without making those contributions equally as useful to Oracle Java itself.
once code goes through the Android build pipeline to produce an Android Application it cannot be meaningfully used in the context of Oracle Java
Android apps typically have an MVC-like structure where the UI uses Android-specific APIs, but the model is straight Java. As an example, I created an Android game and later decided that I wanted to make a level editor as a desktop Java application. I was able to reuse the model code in Oracle's JDK with no changes, even though I didn't have that use in mind when I originally wrote it.
a full packaged Android App cannot meaningfully run on Oracle JDK
Except that all of the Android code is open source and you could port its runtime or API to any platform you like.
The argument you're making is that Oracle is the only party who should be able to extend Java, despite their also releasing it under an open source license. Which, if they hadn't done, no one would have used it to begin with -- as seems to be the direction things are headed given their recent behavior.
> This fragments the ecosystem and essentially allows Android to benefit from the works of the Java rightholders without making those contributions equally as useful to Oracle Java itself.
Java SE, Java EE and JavaME are incompatible. Java was already fragmented by their creators
Re "This fragments the ecosystem and essentially allows Android to benefit from the works of the Java rightholders without making those contributions equally as useful"
Not based on licensing. There is no licensing barrier to making an runtime with the same semantics as ART or Dalvik that runs Java bytecode and is fully compatible with Oracle Java.
Also not by intent. Dalvik bytecode was designed for running without a JIT compiler in a battery powered device - a very specialized and critical design goal.
Oracle is the party that's playing games with standards and licensing, intentionally keeping openness and licensing requirements opaque and intentionally vague. I know this firsthand.
Oracle is such a shit company. There are still some great hackers there but Larry Ellison is an asshole, and I don't envy anyone who has to work for him even indirectly. "Left Oracle's Java business in tatters" eh? Where was their mobile OS? Their Dalvik?
The wounds to Java have all been self-inflicted. If they succeed in copyrighting the API then where does this leave OpenJDK? Operating at the mercy of Larry fucking Ellison, which means not at all.
I've got 17 years of Java experience under my belt, but frankly with Docker + Kubernetes for deployment and new system languages like Rust and Go I'm thinking it's time to jump ship. Or even to C# since apparently MS got the memo on Open Source (not to mention the need for integrated platform modularization - no more Maven hell! Yay!).
Oracle is a parasite, milking the innovations of years ago through customer lock-in and aggressive litigation.
They are a black hole in the tech ecosystem, extracting hundreds of billions of value for themselves, profiting from open source while contributing very little back to the community.
If they win this lawsuit it will be a dark day for innovation and a big loss for shared knowledge and progress.
One coyld also argue the opposite: if Oracle wins, lawyers will start burning the software industry to the ground to an extent such that US lawmakers will be forced to reform copyright and patent laws.
Let's slap a great big IANAL on this before I start:
The fair use decision was wrong. It relied on a fundamental misunderstanding of the term transformative where the use of the code was considered rather than merely the implementation. So Oracle has a huge case here.
Moreover, practically it doesn't matter. Even if fair use is established in this case, the door has been left wide open to hordes of API copyright trolls. If you thought patent trolls were bad, you ain't seen nothing yet.
If you care about the economy, the only sensible outcome would be that API surfaces aren't subject to copyright. Sadly the horse has bolted a long time ago.
Okay, either I'm crazy or everyone else is. Assuming the court isn't trying to set a new precedent with regards to software it seems like Oracle should have easily won this case. There is an argument to be made that APIs shouldn't be copyrightable but surely it's not fair use -- Google's use of Java doesn't even come close to meeting the criteria.
I got a sales call from Oracle out of the blue a few weeks ago. I have no idea what brought my company to their attention.
I explained to the sales person that I am an Oracle-certified DBA with years of experience managing Oracle servers. I then told him there was absolutely no chance I would ever recommend switching to Oracle. In answer to his questions, I explained that I could not trust Oracle. I don't mean Oracle the RDBMS, I mean Oracle the company. He should be able to understand the need to trust your RDBMS. It would be crazy to use RDBMS software with you data if you didn't trust it. I think it would be crazy to trust a developer with your RDBMS if you don't trust the developer.
I don't want to make sure I have the right lawyers and all my legal ducks in a row to battle Oracle for the heart and sole of my company (what company doesn't have data at its core these days?). I want to solve problems and create great things. I want partners in that effort who I trust. I don't trust Oracle. They do not want what is best for me. I don't want to end up as roadkill on there quest to be more profitable. I'd rather work with those who think that my success is their success.
Another thought too: Oracle kicking the hornet's nest on this may end up being a "good thing". Their verdict was dubious at best, they might get overturned and lose even more ground and $.
The sequence, structure and organization of those method signatures, in those 37 Java packages, were all GPL'd in the OpenJDK in 2007 by Sun. Regardless of whether API's can be copyrighted or not, Google had every right to use the code Sun GPL'd.
But anyone, who tried to use JetBrains IDEs on Ubuntu, might have faced the problem uglier font rendering with OpenJDK and the fix to it is to use the JDK from Oracle.
I thought the different with OpenJDK was largely about the licensing. Anybody with some insight on it ?
[+] [-] diebir|9 years ago|reply
Oracle used to survive in significant part by the support of the "database administrators" class. This layer of support is also becoming thinner and older.
There's essentially no way forward for Oracle. They can use hostage tactics to squeeze money out of exiting customers for a few more years, but otherwise they are irrelevant in the tech landscape.
Except for Java, that is. The current tech is powered by Linux and there isn't really anything as big as Java on Linux. Python has been pretty significant and Go is making inroads, but the default is all Java. It is going to be interesting to watch how this will play out.
[+] [-] coolgeek|9 years ago|reply
I think that what you mean is:
Don't get me wrong - there are compelling use cases for, and decent products for, every class of non-relational database.But there's nothing out there that can handle the general use case like an RDBMS.
Anybody who doesn't understand that isn't qualified to be making organization-wide decisions.
[+] [-] ehsankia|9 years ago|reply
I find this strategy extremely toxic and malicious. Google may do a lot of stupid things, and people often make fun of their "don't be evil" motto, but let's be honest, the shit Oracle keeps pulling here over and over is the real definition of evil.
It's purely for profit and doesn't help in anyway to advance technology or humankind.
[+] [-] gaius|9 years ago|reply
It's not about age(ism) it's that Oracle stabbed them in the back by pushing cloud over on-prem where these guys (and gals) were employed. Now Oracle's biggest supporters are re-skilling to Postgres et al and stopped recommending Oracle to their organisations...
[+] [-] tlogan|9 years ago|reply
On other hand, our SV startup culture is all about making some quick websites and get rich schemes.
So the conclusion is: Oracle is here to stay.
[+] [-] bbanyc|9 years ago|reply
(SCO, amazingly, is still continuing its litigation, despite having no products, employees, or assets remaining. Oral arguments on probably-the-last-appeal are March 22 in Denver.)
[+] [-] F_J_H|9 years ago|reply
While in the SV start-up world it may seem like NoSQL is taking over, the Enterprise database market is massive, and replacing the relational databases behind corporate ERP systems with NoSQL based solutions, (to the extent that is even possible/wise), will be a long time coming.
Oracle has a giant footprint in a huge number of organizations across multiple industries. Love them or hate them, (and right now there is good reason to hate then), they are not going away anytime soon, and calling them "irrelevant in the tech landscape" seems premature/myopic given their massive install base and influence in the corporate/enterprise IT space.
[+] [-] nl|9 years ago|reply
Worked for Sun, MySQL, Sieble, Peoplesoft, etc.
[+] [-] pjmlp|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdcravens|9 years ago|reply
Worth noting they own MySQL (via Sun acquisition)
[+] [-] yomly|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StreamBright|9 years ago|reply
I am not sure about the NoSQL part. I see it as more and more companies providing data access to different most-definitely-SQL databases other than Oracle. Postgres even has a migration page: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Oracle_to_Postgres_Conversi...
[+] [-] Spooky23|9 years ago|reply
Every public company needs to run Oracle/Peoplesoft or SAP.
[+] [-] daniel_iversen|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alecco|9 years ago|reply
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/oracl...
> essentially stopping development work on anything that is not directly tied to revenue generation
[+] [-] milesrout|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] technofiend|9 years ago|reply
This purchase was such a seminal moment for the industry you have to wonder what an alternative history would look like if say IBM or Google made the purchase not to mention some dark horses like Amazon or Red hat.
[+] [-] snarf21|9 years ago|reply
To be fair, Google's "don't be evil" is also a bunch of crap. They've done their fair share of shady and exploitive things.
[+] [-] technofiend|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niftich|9 years ago|reply
Projects like OpenJDK and WINE are efforts to provide an alternate execution environment for code that is mutually beneficial to the ecosystem, although perhaps not the wallets of the original owner. A commercial venture ought to qualify here if the intent is to compete on equal footing -- code targeting OpenJDK can run unmodified on Oracle Java, code targeting WINE can run unmodified on Win32, thereby not limiting the original creator's rights.
However, Android Apps contain unrelated public APIs as part of the exported code, and a full packaged Android App cannot meaningfully run on Oracle JDK, despite portions of the standard library looking and behaving alike. This fragments the ecosystem and essentially allows Android to benefit from the works of the Java rightholders without making those contributions equally as useful to Oracle Java itself.
[+] [-] orangecat|9 years ago|reply
Android apps typically have an MVC-like structure where the UI uses Android-specific APIs, but the model is straight Java. As an example, I created an Android game and later decided that I wanted to make a level editor as a desktop Java application. I was able to reuse the model code in Oracle's JDK with no changes, even though I didn't have that use in mind when I originally wrote it.
a full packaged Android App cannot meaningfully run on Oracle JDK
That's true of any platform-specific Java API.
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|9 years ago|reply
The argument you're making is that Oracle is the only party who should be able to extend Java, despite their also releasing it under an open source license. Which, if they hadn't done, no one would have used it to begin with -- as seems to be the direction things are headed given their recent behavior.
[+] [-] Oletros|9 years ago|reply
Java SE, Java EE and JavaME are incompatible. Java was already fragmented by their creators
[+] [-] Zigurd|9 years ago|reply
Not based on licensing. There is no licensing barrier to making an runtime with the same semantics as ART or Dalvik that runs Java bytecode and is fully compatible with Oracle Java.
Also not by intent. Dalvik bytecode was designed for running without a JIT compiler in a battery powered device - a very specialized and critical design goal.
Oracle is the party that's playing games with standards and licensing, intentionally keeping openness and licensing requirements opaque and intentionally vague. I know this firsthand.
[+] [-] throwaway30121|9 years ago|reply
The wounds to Java have all been self-inflicted. If they succeed in copyrighting the API then where does this leave OpenJDK? Operating at the mercy of Larry fucking Ellison, which means not at all.
I've got 17 years of Java experience under my belt, but frankly with Docker + Kubernetes for deployment and new system languages like Rust and Go I'm thinking it's time to jump ship. Or even to C# since apparently MS got the memo on Open Source (not to mention the need for integrated platform modularization - no more Maven hell! Yay!).
[+] [-] gribbly|9 years ago|reply
Actually Microsoft was with Oracle on the whole 'API's should be copyrightable' and lobbied on their behalf during the case.
Microsoft claimed that: "If Google's position that APIs can't be copyrighted stands, it will "destabilize" the entire software industry"
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/microsoft-forese...
[+] [-] panarky|9 years ago|reply
Oracle is a parasite, milking the innovations of years ago through customer lock-in and aggressive litigation.
They are a black hole in the tech ecosystem, extracting hundreds of billions of value for themselves, profiting from open source while contributing very little back to the community.
If they win this lawsuit it will be a dark day for innovation and a big loss for shared knowledge and progress.
[+] [-] ghuntley|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blub|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PunchTornado|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snarfy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheRealDunkirk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddebernardy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moomin|9 years ago|reply
The fair use decision was wrong. It relied on a fundamental misunderstanding of the term transformative where the use of the code was considered rather than merely the implementation. So Oracle has a huge case here.
Moreover, practically it doesn't matter. Even if fair use is established in this case, the door has been left wide open to hordes of API copyright trolls. If you thought patent trolls were bad, you ain't seen nothing yet.
If you care about the economy, the only sensible outcome would be that API surfaces aren't subject to copyright. Sadly the horse has bolted a long time ago.
[+] [-] Spivak|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matt_wulfeck|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] golfer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koolba|9 years ago|reply
I'm not aware of Theranos being a troll. Fraudster for sure, but troll has a different meaning.
[+] [-] ultrahate|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymous7777|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] iamnotlarry|9 years ago|reply
I explained to the sales person that I am an Oracle-certified DBA with years of experience managing Oracle servers. I then told him there was absolutely no chance I would ever recommend switching to Oracle. In answer to his questions, I explained that I could not trust Oracle. I don't mean Oracle the RDBMS, I mean Oracle the company. He should be able to understand the need to trust your RDBMS. It would be crazy to use RDBMS software with you data if you didn't trust it. I think it would be crazy to trust a developer with your RDBMS if you don't trust the developer.
I don't want to make sure I have the right lawyers and all my legal ducks in a row to battle Oracle for the heart and sole of my company (what company doesn't have data at its core these days?). I want to solve problems and create great things. I want partners in that effort who I trust. I don't trust Oracle. They do not want what is best for me. I don't want to end up as roadkill on there quest to be more profitable. I'd rather work with those who think that my success is their success.
[+] [-] faragon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RandyRanderson|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO/Linux_controversies
That hasn't worked out well for them.
IMO, successful technology companies do not correlate with the value dollarsSpentOnLitigation/overallRevenue.
I think selling ORCL and buying QQQ will be a profitable trade in the next 5 or so years.
[+] [-] exabrial|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koolba|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitmapbrother|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ptrptr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gime_tree_fiddy|9 years ago|reply
But anyone, who tried to use JetBrains IDEs on Ubuntu, might have faced the problem uglier font rendering with OpenJDK and the fix to it is to use the JDK from Oracle.
I thought the different with OpenJDK was largely about the licensing. Anybody with some insight on it ?