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Oracle Attacks Open Source; Says Community-Developed Code Is Inferior

Posted by Soulskill on from the completely-unbiased-and-without-any-sort-of-agenda dept.

sfcrazy writes "Oracle has a love-hate relationship with open source technologies. In a whitepaper (PDF) for the Deparment of Defense, Oracle claims that TCO (total cost of ownership) goes up with the use of open source. They're essentially trying to build a case for the use of their own products within the government. 'The skill required to successfully and economically blend source code into a commercially viable product is relatively scarce. It should not be done directly at government expense.' Oracle also attacks the community-based development model, calling it more insecure than company developed products. 'Government-sponsored community development approaches to software creation lack the financial incentives of commercial companies to produce low-defect, well-documented code.'"

4 of 394 comments (clear)

  1. Whitepaper? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Can't we just call them advertisements like the waste of time they truly are?

  2. Hmmm .... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Informative

    And just what fraction of Java was community-developed?

    As usual, when a company makes this kind of claim, my first thought is 'yeah right', and my second though is that it's mostly FUD to convince people to buy the crap you make.

    And, if my limited exposure to Oracle Beehive and a few other things means anything ... Oracle can produce some major-league shit code on their own. That stuff was complete garbage, wasn't even what I'd call a beta, but it was being sold as if it was solid and ready for business.

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  3. Re:Like your own product by djdanlib · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, Oracle Unbreakable Linux is repackaged Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

  4. Re:Like your own product by dyingtolive · · Score: 5, Informative

    Blatantly, even.

    [brad@icarus Desktop]$ cat /etc/oracle-release
    Oracle Linux Server release 6.4
    [brad@icarus Desktop]$ cat /etc/redhat-release
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.4 (Santiago)
    [brad@icarus Desktop]$ uname -a
    Linux icarus 2.6.39-400.209.1.el6uek.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Sep 10 20:39:39 PDT 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
    [brad@icarus Desktop]$

    At least CentOS bothered to change the redhat-release file.

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