we laughed at the Oregon snark. but we went to bed before it was over.

As someone who writes software for government for a living, let me tell you, it's freaking hard. You have multiple interpretation of laws, no clear specs, different people telling you different things, inept IT staffs, the problems of procuring the correct hardware and software at the government, and that's just the beginning. Once you get something you thing works, the laws change and everything you did is now broken.

No one is angry at Oracle because it's pointless to be angry with them. Their products are universally loathed but somehow dominate fields.

Google the phrase "don't anthropomorphize larry ellison".

@2: you're not wrong. But. This is what Oracle does for a living. Larry Ellison has spent literally billions of dollars in the process of converting Oracle from a mere vendor of database software into an IBM-style-and-scale services vendor. Building large-scale systems with multiple interfaces to legacy systems is what they get paid for. It's not unreasonable to ask that, having been given millions of dollars to do this task, that they succeed or give the money back.

@2 I echo @4, but here's the thing- we had what, 20 state exchanges and a federal system, and Oregon's is the one that crashed and burned? Sounds like other vendors figured it out.

@2 & @4. You're both right on this. I've done software for government health care systems that had to interface with insurance providers, and it can be a maze of competing fiefdoms and clueless project managers. Of course, that was before ACA and I was part of a rinky-dink group putting stuff together. Oracle should be a lot better than that. (though my own experience with their db doesn't give me much confidence - it seemed like it was designed to require expensive training/consulting)

Perhaps Oracle was merely following the grand American tradition of defrauding the government on sweetheart contracts. It's the true backbone of corporate wealth.

@3:

Although I don't (thankfully) have a great deal of experience using Oracle products, the few times I have have been universally awful. one company I worked for had almost exactly this same experience: spent over $1mm on an application that was absolutely useless to us and eventually had to be scrapped completely and redone by another vendor from the ground up. So far as I know, we never got any sort of apology, refund, or even a hearty "fuck you!" from Oracle.

@guerre

To be fair the federal exchange almost crashed and burned as well.

@Sir Vic

I also agree that Oracle probably needs to eat a lot of the blame, I hate working with them. I hat their database. I hate their tools.

The only point that I was trying to make is this stuff isn't simple. And I really hate layman criticizing complex software projects when they have no idea what is involved in development at all. Much less complex development for a government system.

@6 "it can be a maze of competing fiefdoms and clueless project managers"

Sounds a lot like Microsoft.

Yes, democracy is messy and government is messy. But let's not pretend that large corporations and other organizations don't have their fair share of chaos and ineptitude.

The only thing that saves the reputations of many businesses is the fact that they make money, which is a relatively simple, measurable outcome that people can easily grasp and fixate on.

Governments, if they're working right, do not have that outcome, so it takes a bit more effort to appreciate their value relative to their costs. The costs we get because, once again, they're expressed in dollars. Dollars we think we understand.

We may be a bunch of fucking idiots but we're not so stupid we pronounce it Ory-GAWN like that slip of a singer.

The full episode is available online (on the show's youtube channel): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tCmriZS…

@7, what this, or any, government entity should be looking for in a similar situation is not "any sort of apology, refund, or even a hearty 'fuck you!'" from a private company but liquidated damages and a performance bond to which it is entitled, due to the enforcement of fair contract terms. But to enforce fair contract terms you have to write fair contract terms into the contract that gets signed, and hire lawyers who will fight in court to enforce them.

This isn't a love affair. It's business.

Has Oracle ever delivered a product that worked, anywhere, ever? Because I'd love to hear that it happened at least once. I know exactly no one who's ever said something to the effect of, "Yeah, the new Oracle software's in. It's working okay. Usual hitches on any big IT project, but it's looking pretty promising."

ORYGUN GOD DAMMIT AUGH

The show has some laughs. I'd definitely recommend it.

All software developed at public expense should be public domain and should be developed in the open like the majority of open source projects.

@16 Absolutely.

@13 I used to think it was me being a dipshit. I spent 3 full days just trying to work with an Oracle version of the database I normally supported. I gave up in frustration when I found I could stumble through the SQL version with much greater success. Since then, I too have not heard of any real life success stories with it.

It's as if they built a form of mass transit without windows or doors.

The first version of the ORACLE DBMS was 90% fabrication & unfilled promises.

Same CEO

@18: Oracle is an SQL (structured query language) database management system.

John Oliver makes me so happy! My new favorite Limey. He's brilliant, the show is the bomb.

I live in PDX, and I can't tell you how many times I screamed at the TV, "Let's get a fucking refund!!!" I've heard some mealy-mouthed afterthoughts about "trying to get some of the money back." WTF? We don't even try because it's just taxpayer money? How is Oracle not responsible?

@arbeck, if you're an engineer, you might enjoy this...http://laughingsquid.com/the-expert-a-hi…

@20 - M$ has done a fine job of convincing everyone that Sybase/Sequel IS SQL but that doesn't make it so. MySQL and Postgres are equally easy to work with.

Oregonian here. While I thought the song was funny, it did give the impression that the ad campaign was where the money went. He did say it was only 3 million of the 250, but making the song the closing of the segment created the appearance that it was the ads' fault. Combined with not mentioning that Oracle screwed the pooch, it felt like the ratio of accuracy to making the joke work was off.

Loved the show though.

I would like to see Oliver take advantage of the HBO platform and do something a little different. The first episode was almost exactly identical to an episode of The Daily Show, which is more than enough to get me to watch on a weekly basis, but I could see him introducing something like hosting a Maher-style panel discussion or even doing some long-form "reporting" and having it be very successful. I dunno, I just feel like there's an opportunity here.