What a fawning piece of tripe. Uncle Larry's monomania and "others must fail" sociopathy might have worked for Oracle in a particular market and time, but it would be a recipe for utter failure in a modern startup where adaptability and collaboration are more valued. He didn't have unique entrepreneurial DNA. He had some skills that were valuable, others that were deficient, and enough luck that the former outweighed the latter.
"He didn't have unique entrepreneurial DNA. He had some skills that were valuable, others that were deficient, and enough luck that the former outweighed the latter."
Luck plays a part in every success story. However, I find it dubious at best to consider that luck is the main factor in Ellison's and Oracle's success.
I find it actually pretty ironic that Larry is so derided here. It seems to come out more due to jealousy (also see: Google, Apple, Facebook, Craigslist now that also have lots of money) than anything else.
Oracle is an expensive product that many companies happily pay for. Everyone here is just upset because they can't charge the same for their startup sass business.
Ever heard of open source? Lots of startups are using and contributing to it, using their participation to attract both users and developers. Yeah, I'd say collaboration is valued quite a bit.
Why don't you make at least a token attempt to research and prove such a strong claim? Most of their open source was acquired, not generated internally, and is demonstrably less active than it was before it became Oracle. Examples include everything from Sun or MySQL. Oracle has probably done more harm to open source than any other company including Microsoft.
Ask anyone who worked on Sun or MySQL whether they think Oracle has been a good steward, even compared to a volunteer-run foundation after the initial sponsor went bankrupt. For example, let's see what Sun's Bryan Cantrill had to say.
No, Oracle isn't a steward. At best they're just using those projects at cash cows. At worst they intended to destroy their erstwhile competitors instead of trying to outdo them. What they are most definitely not doing is devoting the resources necessary to improve or even maintain the health of those projects or their communities.
As for contributions to Linux, here are some figures.
Oracle doesn't even crack the top ten (none/unknown/consultant don't count). For a company that makes so much revenue selling open-source-based products, such as repackaging Red Hat's work and selling against them, 1.3% is a pretty paltry figure. What's really sad is that they contribute even less to anything else, from the Apache or OpenStack foundations down to the zillions of smaller independent projects. Just about the only comparable company with less open-source visibility is Amazon.
Lastly, don't think I or others can't see how your claims keep getting changed or reduced as you're proven wrong again and again. First it was about startups not valuing collaboration, then about Oracle producing more useful open source, then about being a good steward of the open source they've acquired . . . and even that isn't true. What's next? Saying we should still worship Larry because (as far as we know) he hasn't actually killed any babies for three whole months? Stop fawning and learn about the topic.
1.3% is likely more than most meaningful contributions of most of the latest web 2.0 of startups. Most startups do not contribute to open source at all, especially not any parts of their core product.
The rest of this comment is weird personal attacks.
