Oracle is exactly who sprang to mind. Throughout my history as a software developer, even Microsoft has had a ton of interest in being involved in the community. Yes, they've wanted to extinguish much of it, when it didn't align with their financial goals... but they were always interested in being part of the "software development conversation". Oracle on the other hand has never extended an olive branch. They're quite happy existing on their own proprietary island. A great reminder that, "they don't want ot play in the pool with you, they want to own the whole pool and charge you to swim in it".

I worked in parallel with Sun Microsystems (prior acquisition) IBM and Oracle. All 3 were horrible in that regard. They all offered cheap services, and waited until roots were deep enough; then they would change the billing scheme multiplying fees by up to 25

Sun was always fair to me, so much so that I feel like it's unfair to lump them together.

I used Solaris on Sun Fire machines and the support was unmatched, we got massive tome manuals that described in excruciating detail exactly how the system worked in almost all scenarios and a deep programming reference.

They never upselled us on anything, or changed the price.. until Oracle bought them and jacked the support costs up (though, to be perfectly fair, they ought to jack the support costs of old systems up).

Microsoft was _awesome_ to deal with as a small company and/or an educational institution. They had special programs for startups where you could get basically anything for free, and their business side was a pleasure to deal with.

They very much understood the "Developers! Developers! Developers!" mantra.

Marc Benioff is an acolyte of Ellison, he learned and uses the same tactics.

Benioff is Ellison's protégé. Why expect anything less?

> this behavior reminds me of Oracle

I'm sure Salesforce is terrified of growing their market cap by 3x

Funny because Salesforce grew out of Oracle and initially sought to become the anti-Oracle. What was their pitch? Rent your software?

Have you not seen Oracle's price lately?

Salesforce has succeeded in spite of Marc Benioff - but I do wonder how long that can last.

Oracle soon owns part of TikTok. So do they own teens? Will teens be liability?

Brace yourself for the wave of paid teen influencers promoting Oracle.

"I can't wait to yeet my expense reports into Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP, no cap"

I mean the sales team is probably all AI at this point.

It is impossible to know these days. I just get flooded with automated messages in random channels by them wanting to chat with me about whatever place I'm a manager at.