It's their copyright, they get to decide the conditions in the license if you want to use their software.
The EULA is enforceable because you have to agree to it to use the software, and Oracle has large and well financed legal team who will descend from a great height on you and anyone who publishes the results of you doing performance testing.
There's still freedom of speech missing somewhere in this... it seems reasonable to me if we were talking about two businesses, but to prevent a john doe to publish benchmark results? Pardon me but that sounds a lot like corporate-sponsored state-backed censorship. Quite ironic considering Oracle is US-based.
If you're john doe, you have exactly the same standing as a business when agreeing to and complying with the conditions of the license from a copyright owner.
It's not the government restricting your right to speak (1st amendment in the US), it's a private corporate "person".
If you don't like the conditions of the license, you can do one of three things:
1. Don't use the software
2. Use the software in violation of the license, and face the consequences if the copyright owner takes action against you.
3. Get the laws of copyright changed so that conditions about publishing benchmarks is not allowed to be removed by a license.
The licensing laws around copyright have been developed over the last few centuries. They can be changed.
But until they are, the limits are what they are. Currently, Oracle can put conditions on benchmarking and publishing the results in their license and its not only legal for them to do so, but they have prevailed in court when enforcing those conditions.
There's no "meeting of minds" and there's no exchange of value if I simply benchmark a piece of software and then don't use it any further.
This is a bit of a grey zone legally, and steps all over a bunch of consumer protection laws, free speech laws, etc... depending on the jurisdiction.
IMHO governments should explicitly ban these "gag clauses" because it prevents free market competition if customers are not allowed to benchmark software and publish the results.
I fully agree with you that governments should pass laws that restrict the rights of a copyright holder on what they are allowed to control by licensing.
However they haven't, so until they do, you're stuck with the license as is.
As for "meeting of minds" etc and exchange of value, that's irrelevant to the conditions of the license. It's not a contract. It usually starts off with something like "By using this software, you agree to the following terms...".
The copyright that Oracle has entitles it to offer a license with the conditions it wants. They've had that condition in their license for decades.
You are not forced to accept them.
Back in the late 90s, Oracle RDBMS was the "won't get fired for buying" RDBMS. It's been downhill ever since. Once Postgres got partitions, it was over.
Oracle still had a market for high availability clusters for a while, but the increasing performance of single servers and SANs and finally cloud services made that redundant.
So Oracle have spent the last 20 years being bastards about licensing, squeezing their existing customers while the customers do their best to migrate somewhere else.
My 12 was refurbished like... 5 times already - I break various parts of it, and I have a spare 13 that was refurbished 2 times. Even though I can allow myself newer phone, nothing comes close to these models in portability, yet speed.
This is likely a technical limitation rather than a preference; with the requirement to be so thin, there is probably not enough room for the necessary depth scanning hardware required for Face ID.
1. You already know who everyone is. By definition identification as an individual is by government.
2. Why is there not a system that allows a business or other service to ask for government identification that is encrypted and only visible to government, but that allows a business to ask for certain details, required for the operation of the business (eg confirmation of driving license, or age)?
3. Why is that evidence not provided directly, but as a confirmation from the government service ("Yes, this person is over 18", not "Yes, this person is 37")?
Governments need to protect the public, not allow businesses open slather on collecting PII.
> Why is there not a system that allows a business or other service to ask for government identification that is encrypted and only visible to government, but that allows a business to ask for certain details, required for the operation of the business (eg confirmation of driving license, or age)?
Generally speaking, it's the narrative of a pushback on a "national id".
Many countries already have this place. Estonia has the Digital ID provided by government[0]. Nordic countries use BankID, which is a form of KYC that is backed by banks (you prove your identity to the bank, the bank issues a bank id - usually back by certificate[s], and you login with this to services[1][2]). Finland is the outlier, here, with their own service[3].
Yes, which is part of a wider narrative in the US that insists everything must be privatized because the government cannot be trusted or is otherwise incompetent.
The irony I’ve always found in that statement is that while it’s true that the government can’t be trusted and is generally incompetent, it’s also true of private companies. So even though it’s a true statement at face value, it’s still not a good argument for privatization which is just trading one set of incompetent and corrupt people for another set of the same but with even less oversight.
This is already present today in California Driver's licenses in your Apple Wallet (mDL).
When you scan your driver's license at a compatible reader, you're given a notice of what information is being requested and the ability to share it (or not).
It can also request some derived attribute (is this person above the age of 21?) instead of the actual data field itself.
We can't do any of that because it is forward-thinking and doesn't involve clear-cutting a rainforest to make the stacks of paperwork that are otherwise required to fill out forms in triplicate, run everything through 17 different departments, and ensure an army of bereaucrats have something to do with their day.
You said "People" a lot in your post. Corporations are not "people".
Only natural persons should be able to contribute to political candidates.
Corporations can lobby, as a corporate person, just like a union or other organization, but not contribute.
They can run ads themselves, but there needs to be a much greater wall between PACs and candidate campaigns, with the previous restrictions now null and void due to lack of enforcement.
If it's okay for Corporations can run ads themselves, then your objection isn't to wealthy people supporting candidates or even them doing so secretly, but... only when the little guy pools donations and they happen to be pool donations via a corporation?
I'm against anything secret about spending on political campaigns.
Candidates should only accept funds from natural persons, that amount should be limited per person.
PACs and other candidate-adjacent activities should require 100% transparency on the source of funds and not be allowed to co-operate/co-ordinate with any candidate's campaigns. Companies can fund PACs, but they should be required to receive shareholder endorsement and not co-ordinate with their employees.
Laws impacting on the 1st amendment require strict limitation on how the government legislates and for an explicit need.
In this case, it is to ensure the integrity of the political process of selecting candidates and electing members of Congress.
Roe v Wade and the resulting multi-decade clusterfuck is because your Congress are weak-willed pussies who are unable to actually work through a legislative process to find a consensus.
Yes, it took decades, but in Australia our various states have worked through the "it's criminal" -> "It's criminal but not enforced" -> "we're deliberately vague and won't prosecute doctors" -> "we have a legal framework that makes abortion legal up to {20,22,24} weeks on demand, after which it requires the consensus of two independent medical opinions".
The US needs to do the same. Yes, it will take decades. No, it shouldn't because abortion is a medical procedure, but religion is a scourge.
Actual healthcare delivery is a growing field because boomers are getting old and dying and advances in health care mean that people that would otherwise die (eg people with cancers) are now receiving treatments that keep them alive.
Note that this is a Good Thing.
The issue with US (and privatized) healthcare delivery is that there is an incentive (by insurers) to deny treatment, as well as an incentive for healthcare suppliers (hospitals, doctors) to over-deliver treatment, as well as incentives to use more expensive solutions.
Demand in healthcare is inelastic, no one is ever "too healthy".
Supply is always insufficient, so there needs to be a mechanism to resolve that.
In the US, that mechanism is money, or the cost of insurance etc to provide a restriction on demand.
In universal healthcare, that mechanism is a combination of subsidizing medications based on results and waiting lists for limited supplies, prioritized by need (eg surgeries).
Is there any reason to believe less healthcare professionals would be employed under a universal system? Insurance claims adjusters and call centre scripted finance deciders, sure. But actual health delivery agents?
No, if anything there will be more because some of the funds freed up can be spent on healthcare delivery.
But you will lose endless billing departments at general/specialist practices, hospitals etc, because actual consumers would not engage. Hospital administrations will be driven by the government setting reimbursement rates for services that are transparent, so the argy-bargy between someone paying cash, someone getting insurance etc will disappear (mostly).
I'm in Australia, and the billing departments, even at private hospitals are minimal. Ditto at general practices. Reimbursements for GP/specialists that are not "bulk billed" (ie paid at the government rate) are automated into a nominated bank account and are usually instant.
Medicare for All in the US would move the 2/3rds that are not covered by Medicare, VA, etc into the same systems, with the reduction in overhead from 10-20% to the 2-5% of the current government run health systems.
Allowing Medicare to negotiate both drug prices (as a large purchaser) and health services will also dramatically reduce costs, because the government has the purchasing power to drive hard bargains.
The UK has a "universal system" as does Germany and the inevitable reality is that if administration does not limit/deny overuse of the system then it requires setting prices artifically low to limit costs. --> Causes Doctors to earn less wages and be overworked (many med cases). Ultimately, less doctors. =(
Alternatively, the government starts relaxing legal requirements on medical schools with the intent to flood the market with doctors. This not only severely depresses their wages, it leads to unemployment and indirectly to charlatanism and quackery as people try to make ends meet. Better hope the future AI doctors are good.
Alternatively alternatively the government could subsidize medical school for doctors and nurses reducing financial barriers and allowing more medical professionals without lowering standards.
Subsidizing existing schools merely makes it easier for existing medical students. It does nothing to increase the number of doctors entering the jobs market per year. You need to make more schools to increase that number.
You can't just conjure up a medical school out of nowhere though. That's extremely hard and expensive. You can do it if you relax your standards. Maybe by making the "hospital" part of the school optional or something. Students won't see patients but what does it matter.
Except this process is independent of whether there is overuse. It's always a pressure to lower costs, whether they are appropriate or not.
Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare are all basically universal systems for segments of the population. None work well. And all are subsidized from what people with private insurance pay. And the UHC proponents rely on a stacked deck--UHC is "better" in a system that makes 20% of the score "fairness". That is, UHC. And one of the other yardsticks is life expectancy. Sounds fine--but dig deeper. A big factor in lowering life expectancy is infant mortality. Again, sounds fine--except you see a big difference in infant mortality across the developed world that is not reasonably explained by differences in their medical systems. But you see an inverse relationship between infant mortality and stillbirths. Most of what you're really seeing is whether the doctors consider it a live birth that promptly died, or consider it a stillbirth. (And, yes, we are still an outlier--but by only 1/3 of the amount claimed.)
Show me it's better without your thumb on the scale!
The EULA is enforceable because you have to agree to it to use the software, and Oracle has large and well financed legal team who will descend from a great height on you and anyone who publishes the results of you doing performance testing.
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