DeWitt clauseEdit

From "That time Oracle tried to have a professor fired for benchmarking their database":

In 1983, at the University of Wisconsin, Dina Bitton, David DeWitt, and Carolyn Turbyfill created a database benchmarking framework.

Oracle’s performance stood out as unusually poor.

Larry Ellison wasn’t happy with the results and it’s said that he tried to have DeWitt fired.

Oracle added a term to their EULA forbidding the publication of benchmarks. Over the years, many major commercial database vendors added a license clause that made benchmarking their database illegal.

Oracle’s shockingly poor performance and Larry Ellison’s response have gone down in history; anti-benchmarking clauses are now often known as "DeWitt Clauses", and they’ve spread from databases to all software, from compilers to cloud offerings.