[hnarn]

I don’t have direct experience with administrating Oracle, but my impression is that they make a lot of money from the moats they’ve built: but they would never have been able to build them if the product was garbage to begin with. Sure, nobody would probably pick Oracle today for a new project almost regardless of size, but surely there must have been a point in time when Oracle was simply superior when it came to stability and functionality? If not, their current size really makes no sense, because you can’t build a business on scamming people in the long run.

[tetha]

5 - 10 years back, Oracle was very far ahead of the database game and there was no practical competitor regarding performance, query optimization, storage management and enterprisey management features. For quite some time, if you needed a large central relational store for a business, Oracle was the only answer.

The main change is that MariaDB and PostgreSQL have caught up a lot of ground over the last years, so OracleDB has been losing the edge they have been paid for.

[yobbo]

> because you can’t build a business on scamming people in the long run.

When switching is effectively impossible, this is what happens.

Oracle has been buying various application companies with installed bases that are difficult to migrate away from. They are essentially buying customers to milk after putting in their enclosed pasture.

[parasubvert]

Switching isn't impossible, there are plenty of companies that help you get off Oracle. It's just that it's risky and time consuming, requires specialized knowledge, and companies would rather pay up than deal with all of those things. But this goes for almost any complex product on the planet. Switching costs are high,