Don't you have a quality dissonance when a few slogan words are interpreted as multibilion dollar contract and this results in a yet another slogan-type (definitely not S.M.A.R.T.) text that is humorously called "the vertdict"? If this thing stays, it is going to be the source of future lawsuits. If HP Itanium computer was to decide it would output "not enought data" as a verdict, after getting this type of input...

Cosidering my previous posts - I've just debunked the most critical part of judge's justification of the verdict:

"The second sentence of Paragraph 1 states that "Oracle will continue to offer it's products suite on HP platforms... in a manner consistent with that partership as it existed prior to Oracle hiring Hurd" As conceded by Daley who drafted the language, the sentence uses the term "will" and thus speaks of mandatory future actions. The sentence can only be reasonably interpreted as requiring Oracle to continue offering it's product suite on HP's Itanium platforms. As this Court previously held "the plain language is readily susceptible to that interpretation". And the phrase "in a manner consistent with the HP-Oracle partnership as it existed prior to Oracle's hiring of Hurd" ties the future action directly to parties' historic course of dealings in which Oracle consistently and systematically ported new versions of its product to HP's Itanium based-servers".

This is obviously wrong as there are possible multiple viable interpretations of "historical dealings" between corporations. The specific one I deducted was that Oracle was systematically porting new versions of its products to HP platforms that were attractive to port by having good technical parameters, bright future, high or growing market share. That is they were not making porting decisions "by name", but "by parameters". In the past all HP product were attractive, they had desired parameters, now only x86 fullfill these conditions. I believe if Itanium platform had good parameters it would be developed for eagerly (just as Power is supported now, despite coming from a competitor), and that porting is going to happen on any new platform that will offer good parameters (most likely ARM64). So the lack of support is a HP failure - it didn't provide a platform with parameters good enough.

The other possible interpretation - the one that Oracle actually gave, and with which they may win the appeal - was that in the partnership prior to Hurd employnment they always had the right to cease supporting HP platform. They just didn't utilize their right. There's no document forbidding Oracle to drop support for Itanium prior to hiring Hurd, so this interpretation must be considered valid. It's a nomal, recognized right of software owner to stop producting software for some platforms. Microsoft and Redhat did it - both close partners to HP. Oracle could do it too, before firing Hurd - there is no problem there. Interpretation of Hurd agreement as a ban on the right to drop support would mean that Hurd settlement changed the partnership, while Hurd settlement says the partnership should be the same as before - so such interpretation leads to absurd.

Considering possible plain language interpretations - HP continues to offer it's products suite on HP platforms (x86), which constitute majority of what HP sells. So the plain language is fulfilled. There's nothing about Itanium in the plain language of the settlement.

The strangest thing is how the judge extracted time period for which according to him should


I don't work for Oracle.