It's a balancing act. You may or may not agree that Oracle products are a good value but they generally have some good engineering behind them. Oracle also puts a ton of money into sales and marketing.
I think it's been true for some time that Oracle Database has largely been in maintenance mode, with relatively little new engineering or refactoring being done and more resources devoted to sales, marketing, and of course license compliance enforcement. "More lawyers on staff than engineers", as the anecdote goes.
