Thread

Oracle on the hook to pay data centre investors even if site has no electricity

158 points · 154 comments · Betelbuddy

gchamonlive · 1790335420 · focus · HN ↗
A too-big-to-fail about to fail certain it'll be bailed out? Another comment* raised a question about investments in fuel cells that could have been just for show. Are they doing max damage to leech as much cash as possible before implosion or it's just... I mean, it's oracle it's a mystery to me how they make so much money with selling crapware, so it might just be business as usual?
*<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49842884">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49842884
1. philipallstar · 1790336197 · focus · HN ↗
  I don't love Oracle, but they made so much money selling the best relational database on the planet for 40 years.
  1. jiggawatts · 1790337165 · focus · HN ↗
    "The best", but you'll be sued if you publish benchmarks: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_DeWitt#DeWitt_Clause" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_DeWitt#DeWitt_Clause
    Every time I use Oracle, I regret it.
    Just this month, I tried to hook it up to a modern .NET app with the latest Oracle client and discovered that if you cancel a transaction, the connection enters a broken state and is returned to the connection pool, "infecting it". After a half a dozen of those, the whole app server just dies with endless cancellation related exceptions. This isn't even the only such bug, apparently there's a whole family of pool-corruption bugs that have workaround config settings and everything!
    This was with version 23.26.301 which suggests that they've had a lot of major releases, bug fixes, etc... but basic functionality like "connect successfully to the database server every time" is totally broken and has been for many years.
    The issue tracker forums have tumbleweeds rolling through them and play the sound of wolves howling in the distance to provide just the right kind of "what are you still doing here?" ambiance.
    JsonDemWitOster · 1790341729 · focus · HN ↗
    What an honor for Professor De Witt (no relation to my handle).
    My handle notwithstanding, I'm smart enough to not take legal advice from HN but nonetheless I cannot stop myself hence the rhetorical question: how is a EULA clause like that even enforceable? If this isn't going against freedom of speech then this surely it's against some consumer protection laws?
    The cynical answer to that I guess is "a lot of money funding a legal team the size of a warlord's militia" and also "lobbying" but even then it doesn't track to me that this clause could have even that much of an effect as a scare tactic?
    rswail · 1790347807 · focus · HN ↗
    It's their copyright, they get to decide the conditions in the license if you want to use their software.
    The EULA is enforceable because you have to agree to it to use the software, and Oracle has large and well financed legal team who will descend from a great height on you and anyone who publishes the results of you doing performance testing.
    gchamonlive · 1790348492 · focus · HN ↗
    That doesn't address the question of the limits of what should be enforceable in an EULA
    rswail · 1790402470 · focus · HN ↗
    Agreed, but that isn't what we're discussing.
    The licensing laws around copyright have been developed over the last few centuries. They can be changed.
    But until they are, the limits are what they are. Currently, Oracle can put conditions on benchmarking and publishing the results in their license and its not only legal for them to do so, but they have prevailed in court when enforcing those conditions.

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