Larry Ellison's Oracle Started as a CIA Project

Yet another datapoint on Silicon Valley's collective amnesia about the role that government spending had in getting our industry off the ground.

On a different note, I loved this part: And Ellison has worked tirelessly to build that all-seeing database, suggesting that he had even given away for free much of the tech necessary for such infrastructure. He'd only charge the government for additional services and maintenance of the systems, of course. Any DB company could perfectly well give away its software to sell the services and maintenance (under a mini-monopoly due to vendor lock-in). I suspect the reason why they don't is just to distract the customer from where the money is really made.