Oracle Drops Sun's Commitment To Accessibility 220
An anonymous reader writes "What I feared has come true: after buying Sun, Oracle had a look at its accessibility group and made big cuts in it by firing the most important contributors to the Linux accessibility tools. This is a very sad day for disabled people, as it means we do not really have full-time developers any more." The coverage in OSTATIC has a few more details, including the caution: "This just shows that all too few companies are sponsoring a11y work. If one company laying off a couple of developers spells trouble for the project, then there were problems before that happened" (thanks to reader dave c-b for pointing this out).
Capitalism at work... (Score:4, Interesting)
Surely this does not come as a surprise to anyone?
Oracle, who have deliberately lessened the abilities of their own products (from a reasonably solid database system 10 years ago to a steaming turd now) in order to sell more licenses to do the same amount of work will continue to cut anything that is not immediately profitable.
Anything that Sun pursued on moral or ethical grounds, and anything that shows "future promise" will be axed as soon as they spot it.
As well as anything that could potentially compete with their more expensive in-house crap.
People have been worrying about MySQL. They have been right to worry. However, as a corporation, Oracle can and will have all relevant American laws re-written/re-interpreted as necessary to see all commercial deployment of MySQL in the USA dead within two years.
Re:Lawyers at work... (Score:1, Interesting)
Startup your Word Perfects, warm the laser printers, and start sending your demands under the Disabilities Act.
Good Luck. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oracle DB (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not any one thing. It's lots of little things. Lots of flexibility and subtlety with SQL statements. Some obscure functions you wouldn't find anywhere else. More powerful and intricate subqueries and triggers. Extreme flexibility in modifying existing tables and other data structures live. An almost insane level of customizability (any good book on Oracle spends half the book talking about installation.) Now it's not perfect, they still don't have a proper time/date format (time_t anyone??), making date calculations across timezones and taking daylight savings into account a real pain.
Granted, most people don't need this stuff. PostgreSQL is good enough for most roles. The complexity versus reward ratio might not work out for a lot of things anymore, nevermind the cost. I'm out of the game now, so I don't know what the latest stuff does, but they were definitely ahead of the pack for a long time. But they're kind of just going on inertia now. They don't even define themselves as a database company anymore, though that's the only really good product they have. I probably wouldn't buy it today, but I have some fond memories, and it really helped me to build some great stuff.
Re:Some perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
It turns out that one of the people Oracle fired is effectively the Linus Torvald of Linux accessibility. He architected it, and wrote a ton of it. It's like firing Linux, and complaining that after all, it's only one guy.
As for OpenOffice accessibility, kiss it goodbye on Linux. Without Willie or a team of several guys to replace him, it will slowly degrade in to unusablity.
I'm 100% with you on the other guys hiring Willie. My preference would be Canonical (Ubuntu), but RedHat would be a decent fit, and I could even live with Novell. Maybe they could start working off the evil taint.
Re:*Physically disabled* (Score:3, Interesting)
Gnome Accessibility code is Open Source AFAIK. Correct me if I'm wrong please. Therefore, anyone can continue doing that, including the oh-so-famous Willie. If a company decides there's no gain involved in keeping someone, the company will let the guy go. Furthermore, if Willie is as famous as you state, other companies should fight over him like crazy.
Ergo: Either Willie ain't that good or he was doing what he was doing solely for money. And yes, if no passion was involved, I would be scared as well. Otherwise, just wait and see.
Re:Capitalism at work... (Score:1, Interesting)
Oracle and Sun are somehow obligated to employ people charitably? I'd rather they stick to bottom-line stuff that contributes to their employees continuing to be employed in a profitable company.
Re:*Physically disabled* (Score:3, Interesting)
Quoting from a comment I made on the ostatic blog:
"""
Few companies realise the benefits of accessibility. If your product is accessible, you can take advantage of that API to perform tests on the GUI -- that is, driving the GUI through the accessibility layer.
Being accessible means respecting the users colour scheme preferences, fonts and other system settings. This makes the application fit better into the users preferences. This does not just affect accessibility -- try using most applications with a black window background and white text (some applications ignore the text colour and render text black!).
Being accessible also means using keyboard shortcuts that fit with the system and being able to use the application without using a mouse. While some applications (like drawing applications) will require mouse or a tablet to draw with, having the application be drivable through the keyboard means that it is faster to use for the people who know those key sequences (e.g. it is faster to press Ctrl+O to open a file than to move the mouse to the menu/toolbar option for it).
"""
Also, I use text-to-speech software (accessibility) to listen to stories. I am not (yet) blind, I just find it easier. I also use that software to help with proofreading.
And, if I am in a terminal, without access to an X11 server, I can use links to browse the web (the part that supports accessibility, that is).
Allowing a program to be used through a command-line API as well as a GUI also helps with accessibility (a blind user can use it through a command shell, or Braille TTY), while it also makes scripting easier for admins or power users.
Using plain-text configuration files makes it easier to correct and fix issues, or just edit by hand, while it helps with accessibility for the same reason.
So, no... accessibility doesn't only benefit a tiny minority, it is just that people are not usually aware of it.