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
> much of the reason they do this is it is trivially easy to use very authentic looking benchmarks to effectively lie

Have you ever paid attention to how GPUs are marketed, or the dirty tricks the drivers use under the hood? In spite of this, it's still pretty easy to find out which GPU at a given price point is faster.