The bulk of the comments in here are focused on comparing Larry Ellison to a lawn mower, so I'll try a new tack and say that I'm genuinely confused at what the value prop of Oracle is.

Given the history of their business model being licensing of important databases that are hard to switch off of, I've actually made a point to avoid using Oracle as much as possible (even so far as to leave MySQL when they acquired it, and I've never started a fresh project in Java, which they used to drive a lawsuit they had with Google).

From my chair, they make an expensive database they try to sell to golf executives. There are innumerable equal (better?), free alternatives, and most startups are founded by broke coders in bedrooms that choose those instead and stick with the devil they know. And they have an un-competitive cloud service? Enlighten me on what I would use Oracle for, I'm genuinely curious.

Oracle and Java are deeply embedded in US gov work. How deep? Let's just say a large number of classified developer jobs hire for Java. Ellison has been a huge proponent of a surveillance state, and that likely ingratiates him with certain three letter agencies.

The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away.

> The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away.

We all have different circles. I work for a bank and the bulk of the LOB code here is Java (or something that runs under a JVM). There are no Oracle databases as far as I know, but my visibility is limited.

Also, Oracle Applications for things like HR.