Oracle bans AI-generated code from OpenJDK
app.dealroom.co420 points by delduca 11 hours ago
420 points by delduca 11 hours ago
Oracle, the law firm with a tech business attached, probably wants to retain the option to sue other people for AI-washing their proprietary code, and that doesn't work if they're also publicly accepting AI contributions to their code with no apparent concern for the provenance of it. The tech business would probably tell them this isn't going to be a needle they are going to be able to successfully thread, but the law firm is in the driver's seat.
What I don't understand is why anyone with half a brain would even venture to touch Oracle with a ten foot pole given that they've had this reputation for at least the last 25 years.
Why, people?
Because my boss like golf courses and even more when oracle sales rep pays.
Wait, Oracle sales reps give decision-makers personal kickbacks for buying Oracle??
Stay classy Oracle. Such a banal depth of evil.
Why hasn't this been outlawed?
I guess companies that knowingly employ such managers deserve to lose whatever Oracle's legal team extracts out of them.
You've clearly never purchased enterprise software at scale before. Oracle doesn't do anything that everyone else isn't already doing.
Dinners, drinks, bottles of scotch, tickets to baseball and football games, plane tickets to attend training sessions in conference rooms attached to nice beachside hotels, business lunches at strip clubs, Superbowl tickets, cruise tickets, wristwatches...
Not to mention mugs, tshirts, water bottles and stickers.
Everything is on the menu.
nobody has ever been fired for using Oracle
I'd fire someone for using Oracle. I'd put it in the employee handbook.
I bet Oxide would too.
Ass-covering.
The same reason why most huge enterprises buy insane support contracts for every other piece of shitty software: support, and someone to blame when production goes pear-shaped. Because there’s no real management left anywhere, there’s no time to grow expertise internally and everyone just needs that hit of Risk Management (tm), they’ll go to whatever lengths to get it. Oracle is like the ultimate warm, fuzzy blanket where that fuzz is actually mold, it delivers the scared-shitless enterprises from having to think for themselves.
Not even a conspiracy theory. Just the most likely explanation.
"Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' - lawnmower doesn't give a * about you, the lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle." --Bryan Cantrill
This quote is why I have my Claude Code "done" notification sound be the sound of a lawnmower revving.
The lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower, no matter how clever it sounds. (Actually not that hard with Opus5)
What about a guy with a lawnmower intentionally chopping off your foot? And what about a CEO making decisions on behalf of the corporate entity called Oracle?
There is no guy, only the lawnmower, mowing lawns. Sometimes it chops off feet.
It doesn't matter if the lawnmower is chopping off feat intentionally or not. If it's presenting a public hazard, it should be stopped. Even though the ocean couldn't care less it doesn't prevent us from building breakwalls. And Larry Ellison isn't unstoppable as the ocean.
This seems to make Larry more harmless. A lawnmower does not think. Larry thinks, so it seems to white-wash Larry here.
It's more like that movie with Stephen King where the cars and other machines turn actively evil. Hilarious movie too, not great but hilarious.
Rather than harmless, what the lawnmower analogy achieves is to make him seem blameless. "How can you assign blame to a thing that's just doing what it's built to do without any intent?" It's important to push back against that. Intent isn't a necessary condition for something to be dangerous, and so it's not necessary to ask whether it is intentional or not. A rabid dog will be put down regardless of who is to blame for it.
I think the point of the lawnmower analogy is to subjectively characterize Larry Ellison and Oracle from the viewpoint of someone who has had the unfortunate experience of having to deal personally with either of them in some way. You feel powerless against the machine, as it were, and the best course of action is to keep yourself far from the blade.