They exist on legacy vendor lockin, and will milk customers until there is nothing left, which will take decades or more
In university, I had access to Oracle databases, Oracle manuals, Oracle Linux, etc. Not through some special university approved lab set up - I could just go and download them. Even their acquired software like PeopleSoft etc.
I had NONE of that for DB2 or AIX, for example.
And their respective market share, I believe based on no evidence but strong belief, belies that strategy.
(disclaimer, I guess - I work for IBM, but ironically as an Oracle consultant... the early access really did work :-)
People do know that oracle has ALOT more software then their DB right?
I mean their DB is the least vendor lockin thing they sell.....
That was how Adobe ran for a looooong time, up until and including CS6. They didn't give a f..k about piracy beyond something that could trivially be circumvented by a keygen and a few well-placed /etc/hosts entries, and that was what made them the utterly dominant power in anything creative - people were used to years of working with Photoshop (a friend of mine started with photography at age 13!), and so they demanded from employers that they use Photoshop. Incidentally, that also was what kept Apple afloat before the iPod/iPhone days - Adobe stuff just worked fine on Apple hardware but was a nightmare on Windows, so people also demanded Macs for their work.
The advent of CC came once Adobe had achieved that lock-in and started milking its customers for all they were worth, and additionally they opened up a load of legitimate customers as well who didn't feel like dropping a few grand on Adobe stuff but who cares about 50$ a month?
But on the other hand, look at how that turned out :(