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
Why does this need to be regulated? Why would anyone buy software with such an obviously malicious contract like that? I think the problem is we've put up with EULAs for too long. No one would agree to sign a 50 page document when purchasing almost any other product.

>>Housha+FK
Because almost nobody who buys an Oracle license do so with the intention to run and publish these benchmarks. In other words, the EULA doesn’t affect how the vast majority of Oracle’s customers intend to use the software, and so they don’t feel it impacts them. Of course it actually does, because they might not have chosen Oracle, if they’d had access to accurate benchmarks when they made the buying decision, and maybe the fact that the EULA prevented such benchmarks from being published should have been a red flag. And maybe it would have been if Oracle was alone in this practice, but as the article states, it’s close to the standard practice in the industry.