[flohofwoe]

Being a Windows or macOS user starts to feel a bit like living in a Cold War Eastern Bloc country, doesn't it? The government knows what's best for you, now be a good citizen and don't make such a fuzz about it, if we all follow the great vision of the Party the future will be glorious, promised!

The big difference is, if you make a fuzz, Apple or Microsoft won't send the secret police after you (not yet anyway), so I guess the only option left is organized outrage on social media (or flee the country to an uncertain future in the "Free West").

[jiggawatts]

Have you noticed the curious absence of independent commercial database or cloud platform benchmarks? If you publicly post benchmarks of most commercial database products or public cloud services, you'll get a scary letter from some expensive lawyers threatening to end your career, bankrupt you, and ruin your life.

They're not secret police because they're not secret, and they're not police. But in the same way, even if you broke no laws, they will punish you all the same. Small people punishing other small people for angering their "betters".

Explain to me how this is better.

[conradfr]

In the audio world people release plugins named "American Amp" or "Famous British Console".

I wonder if you could post benchmarks of a "Big American Database" and get away with it.

[rank0]

This can’t be true. Where are you getting this info?

[pepperberg]

Have a look at Google Cloud Platform's ToS:

"Benchmarking. Customer may conduct benchmark tests of the Services (each a "Test"). Customer may only publicly disclose the results of such Tests if it (a) obtains Google's prior written consent, (b) provides Google all necessary information to replicate the Tests, and (c) allows Google to conduct benchmark tests of Customer's publicly available products or services and publicly disclose the results of such tests."

https://cloud.google.com/terms/service-terms

[wayneftw]

I thought that people regularly ignored things like EULAs without running into legal problems. Who even reads them?

I guess you'd get in trouble when you go to publish the results, but we probably would have heard about that by now if it ever happened with Google.

[jiggawatts]

https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2018/05/the-dewitt-clause-...

https://dwheeler.com/essays/dewitt-clause.html

[tomrod]

It would seem this should be easy to work around. Simply assign the worst possible benchmark value since test cannot be conducted and make annotation as to why. Infinite time to run a query since benchmarking requires sneakernet approval from commercial provider, or some such.

Put open source in the best possible light and highlight the DeWitt clause at the same time.

[schmorptron]

I've also heard this exact same thing from my Databases professor about Oracle and their products.

[t8sr]

Are you suggesting that if you post a performance benchmark about a commercial database that you’ll get threatened with legal action? Do you have anything to back that up? It sounds far fetched, and a cursory search finds many such benchmarks on random people’s blogs.

[spijdar]

It's present in the EULA for many databases, etc in http://download.microsoft.com/documents/useterms/SQL%20Serve...

"e.Benchmark Testing. You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of either the Server Software or Client Software to any third party without Microsoft’s prior written approval."

Hasty addition: I doubt random benchmarks would be threatened with legal action -- but the key is you are technically breaking your license agreement by posting a benchmark. I'm sure the likelihood of whatever DB company pursuing action depends on both the company, who you are, and in what avenue you posted your benchmark.

If you're well known, have a large audience, and publish a bad benchmark of Oracle DB, I would be very surprised if Oracle didn't contact you directly and demand some action.

[Semaphor]

They’d be hard-pressed to make that case in Germany (or the EU actually, as they took our laws in that regard), the EULA has to follow the pretty strict regulations for AGBs which also can’t contain surprising clauses.

This is only for B2C though.

[BiteCode_dev]

Doesn't matter if that doesn't hold in court. The whole problem is that loosing in court has no cost for them, but just going to court is a net loss for you.

[gsnedders]

That depends on the country; losing in court could have the cost of your legal fees for them in some countries.

[tzs]

I believe that most of that clauses are there for tit for tat reasons. Someone (Oracle?) was the first to do one--and then they published comparative benchmarks showing that their product was better than the competitors.

The competitors could not respond with counter comparisons due to the first company's license, and so instead they added their own prohibitions to stop the first company.

Some of them just adopted the same blanket prohibition, but some were more subtle, going for reciprocity rather than prohibition--you could not publish benchmarks comparing their product to others unless you could grant or obtain for them permission to also publish benchmarks doing the same comparison. Some also required that you publish complete details of your testing so that it could be reproduced.

I don't know if anyone still uses the reciprocity approach. I'd expect that there would be plenty of loopholes that someone (Oracle?) could use to get around it that any big player using it would have given up and went for a straight prohibition.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

> I believe that most of that clauses are there for tit for tat reasons. Someone (Oracle?) was the first to do one--and then they published comparative benchmarks showing that their product was better than the competitors.

Actually there is a good story behind it. See: "Larry Ellison allegedly tried to have a professor fired for benchmarking Oracle" [0] and the related HN discussion. [1]

[0] https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886333

[simonh]

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12115397/is-it-against-l...

Speeding is illegal but people do it all the time. Small time blogs posting a few numbers might not rise to the attention of the big dogs, but their license terms are clear and Oracle for sure has threatened action in the past.

[pjmlp]

You forgot the part that owning a system running anything else makes you dissident, worthy to be invited to a private "talk" with the security state police.

[Razengan]

> Being a Windows or macOS user

macOS is nowhere near as bad as Windows. You can still use it without an Apple account, and there are no ads/spyware (unless you really want to pick straws) even if you do use an Apple account.

[sneak]

That's not true. Apple devices maintain 24/7 persistent connections back to Apple with client certificates based on the unchangeable hardware serial number. Apple knows (or can know) the approximate location of every modern Apple device.

It's better than Windows, but it's still spyware.

[BiteCode_dev]

Also it has a mesh network of devices (see airtag), which makes it even more intrusive: you can be offline, but if you use your BT headphones, they can get to you. They say they protect your privacy but I never forget they were part of PRISM, so their words are worth nothing.

[okamiueru]

That's not the worst part. MacOS monitors every time you run an executable, which executable, when and where, and it shares this with unencrypted traffic. Not only that, but the data is collected as part of PRISM, so there is no court order to get it. https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/

[sneak]

It's not "collected as part of PRISM" any more than any other thing is.

PRISM is an internal codename for (not bulk! specific!) downloading of data direct from FAANG et al servers under FISA Amendments Act section 702. It's warrantless but is not bulk/mass surveillance. (Also, it technically is a "court order" as there is a secret rubber stamp "FISA court", but it doesn't require a warrant or probable cause, or allow for review/appeal because it's proceedings are classified.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intell...

Theoretically it's not supposed to be used against US citizens but Snowden has claimed that a secret interpretation in a secret court has decided that it can be.

https://www.eff.org/702-spying

They use it a ton, though, as it's the #1 most used source in the US IC. Apple turns over more than 30k user accounts of data under warrantless FISA orders each year, per their own transparency report.

That said, Apple has (in response to my blog post you linked) committed to a) encrypting that OCSP traffic in the next macOS, and b) deleting all of their stored logs.

That wouldn't have stopped the IC from monitoring all of that previous unencrypted traffic and logging it themselves, though, but that has nothing to do with PRISM/FISA. That's bulk collection, which is a different thing than PRISM.

[sneak]

Oh, it's also worth mentioning that even if you don't use the App Store, iCloud, or an Apple ID, you cannot opt out or disable these push connections. You have to filter them at the network level if you don't want a mac, iPhone, or iPad to phone home.