It only makes the line go up in the short term. In the long term companies will avoid Oracle, and sales will go down. But shareholders don't care about the longterm.

Maybe they'll invest some of the rent into monopoly strategies and micro-improvements that keep Oracle attractive for high-stakes customers.

I hope I'm wrong though.

Oracle has demonstrated the long-term and their stock has never been higher. Their sales are finally heading higher again.. They're one of the oldest software companies and are approaching 50 years old. What is more long-term in their industry than what they have accomplished?

They're better positioned now than they have been at any other point in the past 10-15 years.

To be fair, maybe they do make good enterprise database software. There's got to be something to their success apart from lock-in.

Just make sure you don't benchmark it. Comparing to the competition is a serious breach of contract.

Oracle is not an abusive relationship, it's just that you shouldn't be looking elsewhere, and infractions will be punished. They are very serious about audits.

That sounds absolutely ridiculous, but well, you made me search it, and it seems to be true-ish :D

So here is the shortcut to a HN thread about this, for people like me, who hadn't heard about the case (assuming that's the one you meant):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886333