Re: http://www.hjrdba.com/

In article <3CD2B48C.AD8ADB30_at_earthlink.net>, you said (and I quote):
>
> Again? When did this happen previously?

The many times that Oracle has asked their employees to not have a "public" presence. Unless "sanctioned" by the company like what happens with Tom's site.

>
> Would you prefer to have Oracle sued when Howard makes a mistake and
> publishes erroneous information? It may not have happened, but the
> possibility clearly existed.

So what? A simple disclaimer would have solved the issue. After that anyone who would have taken exception to anything in Howard's site would have been labelled an idiot if there was a lawyer with a brain looking into it.

I can find errors in Metaclick as it is now. And heaps of errors in the Oracle manuals, along the many years they have been out. Yet nobody in its right mind would even attempt to sue Oracle for that. Why? because they make it very clear in their disclaimers that no such thing can happen. Exactly the same principle applies here.

> Agreed. It was clearly a labor of love and a beneficial one at that.
> However, if you think for a second that any other large tech company
> would act any differently, you're sorely mistaken. All such companies
> have a very careful QA process for releasing documentation to the
> public.

That is totally incorrect. There is no such process, there never was. I've worked with Oracle and many, many other companies in the last 25 years and I can tell you upfront there is no such process ANYWHERE! Most of the stuff IT companies put out doesn't even get proof read, let alone quality assured! That's why they have so many disclaimers all over the place. And let's not talk about anything that might be qualified as marketing material...

>
> I would also be willing to bet that Australian laws are not much
> different than the rest of the world in this respect. For instance, if
> you worked for Intel in the US and invented a new chip, guess who owns
> the patent? Right, Intel, not you. Is that fair? Absolutely. If you
> think you could have invented that chip without all the capital outlay
> that Intel provided you as an employee (computers, labs, documentation,
> fellow employees, telephones, healthcare, whatever), then you should
> have quit your job and done it on your own. Then the patent is all
> yours.

Howard's site was an information spreading site. Got nothing to do with invention of any product. Two completely different things.

>
> A site like Howard's wouldn't be much different. Howard, by virtue of
> being an Oracle employee, is privy to vast amounts of information not
> available to the general public. He has free access to Oracle
> University materials, free access to other Oracle-employed experts,
> internal Oracle-only documentation, and gets to hone his skills on
> Oracle's nickel as an instructor. Clearly, Howard's writings (though
> insightful and original) directly benefitted from his status as an
> Oracle employee. Could he have produced those same writings had he not
> been employed by Oracle? Maybe, but that's a tough one to prove. So
> yes, Oracle owns what he's produced, as well they should.
>

OK, the two things are not similar like I said. But you got a point there. Howard being privvy to info that others cannot obtain is a well known (and accepted) thing. So do many others that have a web presence. We all accept it and thank them for taking the time off their busy schedule to spread a very small portion of that information.

Should Oracle ask all of them to shut up as well? When is a web presence sanctioned by Oracle? Where is the line drawn exactly? Why would Oracle be even remotely interested in only having "official" web sites on the web?

The amount of stuff in Howard's site was very small compared to what can be obtained from proper Oracle training. There is not even a point in saying that Oracle's education income would suffer from sites like his. It would not. If anything, there would be even more stimulus to use Oracle education. By being able to verify the quality of the stuff that can come off their instructors. In the past that has not been always the case, so every little bit helps here.

> It's a shame that all the personal time he spent on the site is now
> lost.

Indeed.

-- 
Cheers
Nuno Souto
nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam