Commitment to Open (Red Hat News)

I don't believe that my comment reached the level of slander. Slander implies that I'm lying about them. I'm commenting on their behavior. Perhaps in UK and other places this might be considered slander. Libel laws in the US are a lot more relaxed. We can actually call people out on their behavior and not get sued for slander/libel.

There are probably a lot of people that would agree that that Larry Ellison is an arrogant douche bag. (I'm sure he's a hero to lots of others.) Oracle and the way it runs seems to exude his personality/style. As a result Oracle as a company seems to be a bunch of douche bags. I think that the exodus of engineers from Sun kind of proves the style of company.

Bob Sutton's book "The No Asshole Rule" discusses the fact that assholes in leadership can result in asshole poisoning. People become assholes because of the environment generated by their leaders.

RedHat is a leader in the commercial opensource world and they didn't get that way by just buying a company with lots of OpenSource projects. As a result they help to set the tone and are able to call people out on bad behavior. If they become douche bags it doesn't bode well that others won't become as bad if not worse.

Let me make clear that I'm not calling the engineers or the general workers at either company douche bags. Unfortunately they have a duty to do what their mgmt wants unless it violates the law.