Mark Roulo (nothanks.delete@this.xxx.com) on August 1, 2012 3:08 pm wrote:


As I understand this there were 3 events:

1. Mark Hurd soap opera. It ended with the agreement which intention was to show that this event won't break working together. And both parties kept their obligations - they offered Oracle for HP hardware despite of Hurd job status.

2. Buyout of Sun by Oracle. This ended with Oracle assuring HP they are not stopping support of the platform because of this.

3. Oracle learning about Itanium end-of-life. According to Oracle it was this event that lead Oracle to stop software development on Itanium. This was btw. preceded by Redhat and then Microsoft dumping development of future versions for Itanium. Basically Oracle followed a market trend.


What the judge has done is an unjustified extrapolation of agreement form event #1, which was about ending the Hurd dispute, towards forcing Oracle to perpetually develop and offer software for Itanium, basically denying them freedom of decision in events like #3. This is obviously wrong for multiple of reasons. For example consider if there is any indication in the Hurd settlement for what period of time partnership lasts? There's no specification of any time period. So it cannot be interpreted as obligation for perpetual mutual support, 100 years mutual support, 50 years mutual support or whatever date you put. The only connection to real-world in this document is Hurd dispute, which means cooperation won't end because of it.

Then consider what "partnership" means. Is it defined in any written form? If it's not idt doesn't mean a judge can define it in any way he feels like. Like making Oracle a support slave to HP. Even analogies to the past are wrong interpretation of what was happening in the past between these corporations. Then HP was offering attractive hardware and Oracle was producing software running on hardware they found great. So Oracle committment was not because it was HP or because it was PA-Risc, but because these were modern, competitive machines, and also because there was no much replacement of them by commoditty hardware, this hardware had a future, belonged to a growing platform. This continues today - Oracle definitely doesn't produce AIX software because it's from their major competitor IBM... Right now HP doesn't offer great or attractive hardware with Itanium, the market trend is to leave Itanium, so conditions are opposite than in the past.

The most stupid interpretation of this judge is the one about Oracle supporting discontinued HP platforms, and the way that he fails to see HP guilt there. It should mean HP is guilty of discontinuing viable platforms that Oracle was still willing to sell software on. Which means there were never barriers to discontinue products in this partnership. Meanwhile IBM still sells mainframes.