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Comment by stephen_g | Hacker News Reader

I’d actually much, much rather see it set up as a proper fork (rebranded etc.), and then the features that Oracle extorts people with in the “free” but not actually free extension pack (like USB pass through) re-implemented and included directly with no ‘extension’ required.

Much of the reason I refuse to use Virtualbox for anything is how scummy Oracle is.

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At a previous employer Oracle sent a nastygram because they saw downloads of the VirtualBox extensions pack (which is free to download, but requires a license) coming from our IP block. This despite the fact that we were a big Oracle customer (tons of Oracle DBs; granted, we hadn't purchased VirtualBox licenses). I'd rather not deal with a vendor that's that antagonistic.

> This despite^H^H^H^H^H because of the fact that we were a big Oracle customer

FTFY.

Having spent time at another large Oracle customer that was later acquired by Oracle I've seen how they do this internally too. And you can't just send it off to Legal to write back that "we didn't actually use it"...

This employer has a massive network with a bunch of guest networks (it's a hospital chain), so I thought they could just say there was no way to know whether it was employees or not. Of course, IIRC they just paid the ransom and added new restrictions on how employees could manage their work machines.

Haha. I understand the sentiment. That's a pretty large effort though and needs some funding as well.

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