<story><title>Larry Ellison allegedly tried to have a professor fired for benchmarking Oracle</title><url>https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>whack</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;If we look at major commercial databases today, two out of the three big names in commericial databases forbid publishing benchmarks.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I see many people bashing Oracle&amp;#x2F;Ellison, but they are not alone in this. MS does the same thing as well. The really worrying thing is that such practices are deemed to be legal. The entire principle of Free Markets is underpinned by consumers having accurate information about the goods they are purchasing. Having licensing agreements that are expressly designed to prevent the dissemination of product-information, goes against everything that Capitalism and Free-Markets stand for.&lt;p&gt;The fact that there are no government regulations against such behavior, is precisely what leads people to think that we are living in a Corporatocracy, and not a Free Market.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CalChris</author><text>&amp;gt; The entire principle of Free Markets is underpinned by consumers having accurate information about the goods they are purchasing. Having licensing agreements that are expressly designed to prevent the dissemination of product-information, goes against everything that Capitalism and Free-Markets stand for.&lt;p&gt;I agree with where you are going but I entirely disagree with your description of Free Markets and Capitalism.&lt;p&gt;free market - &lt;i&gt;an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;nothing&lt;/i&gt; in there about &lt;i&gt;consumers having accurate information&lt;/i&gt;. If anything, &lt;i&gt;caveat emptor&lt;/i&gt;. Moreover, if you are a free market entrepreneur then the absolute last thing you want is fairness to your competition or fairness to your consumer. Those are costs of doing business, to be avoided if possible. Naturally, Larry is only trying to avoid them.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why we have regulation. That&amp;#x27;s why civilization has evolved to have government. That&amp;#x27;s why Libertaristan isn&amp;#x27;t on any maps. That&amp;#x27;s why &lt;i&gt;The Fountainhead&lt;/i&gt; is such a misguided fantasy where entrepreneurs can do anything and it&amp;#x27;s always better and governments can do nothing and it&amp;#x27;s always worse.&lt;p&gt;Free Markets and Capitalism don&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;stand&lt;/i&gt; for anything. That&amp;#x27;s not even a criticism of them either. Civilization might stand for something although that something is a provisional something at best but then that provisional something is better than nothing.&lt;p&gt;The requirement for &lt;i&gt;consumers having accurate information&lt;/i&gt; is a government regulation. In the United States, it&amp;#x27;s enforced by the Consumer Protection Agency. It isn&amp;#x27;t a free market requirement.</text></comment>
<story><title>Larry Ellison allegedly tried to have a professor fired for benchmarking Oracle</title><url>https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>whack</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;If we look at major commercial databases today, two out of the three big names in commericial databases forbid publishing benchmarks.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I see many people bashing Oracle&amp;#x2F;Ellison, but they are not alone in this. MS does the same thing as well. The really worrying thing is that such practices are deemed to be legal. The entire principle of Free Markets is underpinned by consumers having accurate information about the goods they are purchasing. Having licensing agreements that are expressly designed to prevent the dissemination of product-information, goes against everything that Capitalism and Free-Markets stand for.&lt;p&gt;The fact that there are no government regulations against such behavior, is precisely what leads people to think that we are living in a Corporatocracy, and not a Free Market.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TheIronYuppie</author><text>I have no objection to your overall sentiment, but, TBH, much of the reason they do this is it is trivially easy to use very authentic looking benchmarks to effectively lie. The net is that the academic ideal of a free market is effectively unachievable in real life - perfect information does not exist.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know how to get around this problem of course.</text></comment>