zlacker

>>pavel_+(OP)
> If we look at major commercial databases today, two out of the three big names in commericial databases forbid publishing benchmarks.

I see many people bashing Oracle/Ellison, but they are not alone in this. MS does the same thing as well. The really worrying thing is that such practices are deemed to be legal. The entire principle of Free Markets is underpinned by consumers having accurate information about the goods they are purchasing. Having licensing agreements that are expressly designed to prevent the dissemination of product-information, goes against everything that Capitalism and Free-Markets stand for.

The fact that there are no government regulations against such behavior, is precisely what leads people to think that we are living in a Corporatocracy, and not a Free Market.

>>whack+2d
I have no objection to your overall sentiment, but, TBH, much of the reason they do this is it is trivially easy to use very authentic looking benchmarks to effectively lie. The net is that the academic ideal of a free market is effectively unachievable in real life - perfect information does not exist.

I don't know how to get around this problem of course.

>>TheIro+hf
I agree that we can never get to the ideal of a free market, but at the very least, we can ban business practices that are expressly designed to undermine the free market. We already have anti-trust laws that prohibit companies from some practices, such as price-fixing or false-advertising. We really need to strengthen such laws to ban modern practices such as benchmark-bans.