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Comment by ndneighbor | Hacker News Reader

Knowing Oracle, they will take it to court if they can. To paraphrase Cantrill, it's a company that behaves very much like a lawnmower.

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If you want to personify the mistaken belief "if a company can make money legally then it is obliged in law to do it, to maximise shareholder value" thing: Oracle is that company. There is only one goal. Immediate reporting cycle uptick benefit. There is no other goal.

I can think of almost no play they have made in the market which has any longterm net beneficial outcome for the entire market, despite "grow a bigger market" being a thing. We would have ZFS in a lot more places, if Oracle hadn't made a short term licence play, and muddied the waters.

We used to hate on a range of companies about their IBM like qualities (market dominance, bad behaviour inside the law) but now, IBM is a pale shadow, and Oracle has taken the crown.

I wish I could agree that Oracle are somehow acting in the interest of their shareholders but I fail to see how they benefit by spending hundreds of thousands on lawyers to try to protect a trademark that makes them zero revenue and on the whole damages their brand.

If they win, there’s a forever revenue stream to extract and they keep their TM law sharp.

There's no revenue stream, JavaScript is the colloquial term used to refer to ECMAScript, ain't nobody paying Oracle if they started trying to enforce it.

It intimidates anyone who might want to sue them for anything else. Being widely known for your scorched earth policy can be pretty effective. (Certain "we never settle" insurance companies do this too.)

Even during the darkest days, IBM made reliable unkillable overengineered stuff.

Oracle has been making only lawsuits for a while.

Since at least the introduction of the DeWitt clause, if not earlier!

The likelihood of the JavaScript trademark bringing any real benefit to Oracle in the future is close to zero, but the legal costs of taking it to court are significant. For the sake of mere spite and mean-spiritedness they seem to be trying to waste the company's money.

Yes, the only upside I can see for them is it reinforces their reputation of being ruthless in legal proceedings. Which you might consider a good thing if you subscribe to the "it is better to be feared than loved" philosophy.

It's pushed by a teenager and cuts grass?

> Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle. — Brian Cantrill (https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m1s)

I started to dislike that quote somewhat. Why should we celebrate the fact that our society doesn't place moral pressure onto executives? Why should we find it acceptable that this is the status quo?

I urge you to watch the video to see the context. Cantrill does not think this is acceptable, never mind celebrated.

You could interpret it the other way: Such executives don't have moral protection.

No one is celebrating anything.

I am glad to see that many people are being correcting you, but just to put a sharp point on it: I am using that metaphor to condemn Ellison, not to condone or accept him.

Unfortunately, since that talk in 2011, what was an aberration (albeit a broadly unspoken one) has since -- tragically -- become the norm. I refuse to accept this, however: I will continue to speak my truth about the moral decay in tech, and why we must hold ourselves to a higher standard.[0][1][2][3][4] And I obviously agree with your indignation that poor corporate behavior should not be the status quo!

[0] Principles of Technology Leadership, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMGAtxUlAc (2017)

[1] Andreessen's Corollary: Ethical Dilemmas in Software Engineering, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wtvQZijPzg (2019)

[2] (Anti-)application Video for YC120, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px9OjW7GB0Q (2019)

[3] Coming Of Age, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzdVSMRu16g (2022)

[4] Intelligence is not Enough, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQfJi7rjuEk (2023)

Welp. I'm officially sorry. I guess my indignation with the ethics status quo at the moment blindisded me and I read the quote in the wrong light/context.

Definitely gonna take a look at those videos too, thank you so much for everything!

Nothing to apologize for! Especially if you had only seen the quote, it's an entirely reasonable inference. And I am frankly embarrassed about how much mores in tech have shifted since 2011 -- and what would have been inferred as obvious decrying then is much less obvious now!

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