the road less traveled...

Story: Scary Scenario: Oracle leveraged into dominant OSS position with Sendmail, Apache, Linux, etc.Total Replies: 1
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majones

Feb 15, 2006
2:41 PM EDT
Oracle's out to make a profit and build shareholder value. You don't do that by being friendly to guys who want free stuff. As the smb and mid-markets more fully adopt open source technologies and products, their data gets "invested". These markets have already demonstrated their tendency to follow the path of least resistance (e.g., not changing software very readily or willingly - look at QuickBooks if you want a good example of this). The indication is that even if a fork in the road is available, the market is still likely to follow the path that is more heavily traveled.
tadelste

Feb 15, 2006
3:09 PM EDT
Quoting:Oracle's out to make a profit and build shareholder value. You don't do that by being friendly to guys who want free stuff.


Joanie,

That's the problem in a nutshell. The disconnect lies in the belief that people want something for nothing and that value is only measured quantitatively. Oracle should know the value of creative development. They nearly got stomped into a flat surface until they web enabled their products. As I recall, you advocate web enablement.

Guys who want something for free could be their next big channel partner or acquisition. Do you think Berkeley DB or JBoss was built with expensive tool kits from proprietary vendors? If we don't empower talented people who don't have means, then we wind up with a pool of people who sheepishly follow the accustomed paradigm which we can call "invested".

Sure, practitioners are generally invested in existing paradigms. They don't innovate, though. If the US continues to dis-empower its inventors while allowing idiots to patent ridiculous things and then call themselves inventors, we'll see the end of American prosperity by the end of the decade.

I remember Open Market winning a patent for a whole bunch of things like the phrase "transactions over the Internet".



Oracle contributes mightily to dis-empowerment.

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