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Essential insights from Hacker News discussions

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Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

Here's a summary of the themes discussed on Hacker News regarding Oracle's contributions and reputation:

Oracle's Past Value and Current Perception

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around whether Oracle has historically added value to the tech ecosystem and how its current perception influences opinions on its products. Some users believe Oracle was once a positive force but has become a "rent-extracting behemoth," hindering innovation due to IP ownership. Others question if Oracle has ever added value.

  • "At some point, decades ago in the past, Oracle added value to the tech ecosystem. Now, they’re a giant rent-extracting behemoth." - lvl155
  • "When has Oracle ever added value whatsoever to the tech ecosystem?" - fluidcruft
  • "people just like hating on successful companies, a HN special.. I ignore most those types of posts on this site because they are without any merit" - beanjuiceII
  • "I think the Oracle hate goes a bit beyond the generic hatred for successful companies (be it Microsoft, FAANG, etc)." - toyg
  • "But as long as most geeks can remember, Oracle has never been cool." - toyg

Specific Contributions and Projects

Despite the general negativity, several specific contributions from Oracle are highlighted, particularly concerning Java and its ecosystem, as well as contributions to Linux development.

  • Java and OpenJDK: It's noted that Oracle has invested heavily in Java and OpenJDK since acquiring Sun Microsystems, leading to rapid advancements.
    • "Both Java the language and OpenJDK the main runtime & development kit have had much more money and manpower poured into them under Oracle than they ever had previously. Both continue to advance rapidly after almost dying pre-Oracle acquisition." - homebrewer
    • "They've done a ton of stuff with Java, including open-sourcing it in its entirety." - ternaryoperator
  • GraalVM: GraalVM is specifically called out as a valuable, high-quality FOSS AOT compiler for Java, with Oracle being its main developer.
    • "I don’t love Oracle, but GraalVM is pretty cool." - tombert
    • "they're also the main developer of GraalVM — the only high quality FOSS AOT compiler for Java" - homebrewer (edit)
  • Helidon: Oracle is also mentioned as developing Helidon, a modern, lightweight alternative to Spring.
    • "and are writing one of the major relatively lightweight modern alternatives to Spring (the other two being Micronaut and Quarkus): https://helidon.io" - homebrewer (edit)
  • MySQL: Oracle's role in MySQL development is discussed, with MySQL 8 being cited as a significant release, though some users feel development has stalled since Oracle acquired Sun.
    • "MySQL 8 (released in 2018) was a massive release that brought many long awaited features (like CTEs) to the database, although MySQL's development have stalled during the past few years." - homebrewer
    • "Many already moved to MariaDB, because development stalled after Oracle bought Sun (which bought MySQL)." - timeon
    • "9.0 is finally released and we are now at 9.3. While nothing big or exciting with every release but development is steady." - ksec
  • Linux Kernel Contributions: Oracle employs several Linux kernel developers and is a significant contributor, especially to XFS and btrfs.
    • "Oracle employs several Linux kernel developers and is one of major contributors (especially to XFS and btrfs): https://lwn.net/Articles/1022414" - homebrewer
  • VirtualBox: VirtualBox, inherited from Sun, is also mentioned as an Oracle product.
    • "There's also VirtualBox (inherited from Sun)." - arp242

Corporate Culture and "Risk Aversion"

A recurring theme is the perception of Oracle's corporate culture, which is often characterized as being driven by business rather than pure engineering, leading to what some see as a detrimental approach to open-source projects and a focus on "rent-seeking." The concept of corporate "risk aversion" is also brought up as a reason for sticking with established, albeit perceived as less innovative, vendors.

  • "Sun did engineering. Oracle does business." - gardnr
  • "I’d be surprised if Oracle released the trademark without a fight to the end. They have a special way of decimating open source projects." - gardnr
  • "Those days will probably never be behind us because incentive structures in companies make employees risk averse." - osigurdson
  • "The quality of engineering varies wildly within Oracle, to the point that entire divisions can be relied on to produce absolute garbage because longevity completely trumps talent." - hamburglar
  • "But they're not the sorts of costs that show up well on balance sheets, so good luck convincing anyone that they exist." - kyralis

The Evolution of Databases and Scaling

The discussion touches upon the historical dominance of Oracle's RDBMS and how the landscape has evolved. There's a debate about which RDBMS is "best" now, with comparisons made regarding horizontal scaling and the increasing power of single servers.

  • "From 01979 until about 02000, Oracle's RDBMS software was probably the best in the world, and definitely better than the free-software alternatives like Postgres." - kragen
  • "Which RDBMS software has/have become the best in the world after that?" - aleph_minus_one
  • "Postgres presumably" - cerved
  • "As far as I am aware (I may be wrong, or things have changed in the last years) Postgres still is is worse in horizontal scaling than Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server (and likely also DB2)." - aleph_minus_one
  • "Maybe, but I think MariaDB beats all of them at that. Also, though, horizontal scaling is a lot less important now than it was 20 or 30 years ago." - kragen
  • "I think the space of databases that are under ten terabytes and under ten million queries per second is large enough to cover almost everything that most people think of when they think of 'databases'." - kragen

Oracle's Antiquated Practices and "Hate-fests"

Some users criticize Oracle's past business practices, such as aggressive sales tactics, blackmailing customers, and suing competitors. This historical context is seen as a reason why Oracle is viewed negatively, regardless of current efforts or contributions. The phenomenon of users engaging in "hate-fests" is also noted, suggesting that some criticisms might stem from ingrained biases rather than objective product assessment.

  • "But as long as most geeks can remember, Oracle has never been cool. At its peak, the company enabled a world of snooty BOFH DBAs, selling unreasonably expensive products to well-oiled middle-managers. And then they started 'acqui-squeezing' adjacent products, blackmailing their own customers, and suing everyone in sight." - toyg
  • "If it's an honest question and not just the beginning of a hate-fest, let's think..." - homebrewer
  • "This sort of thing is why I would think very hard before using anything from Oracle." - arp242

The Purpose of Leading Zeros

A minor, but amusing, tangent in the discussion concerns the unexplained leading zeros in years like "01979" and "02000," which one user speculates is to avoid a "y10k bug."

  • "This may be a setup but I gotta ask…why the preceding 0 in 01979 and 02000?" - Narciss
  • "Avoiding the y10k bug, obviously." - loloquwowndueo