back to article Judge shoots down Oracle's Solaris support 'trafficking' claim

Oracle has suffered a setback in its latest attempt to reserve the Solaris support business for itself. A US court has thrown out part of a lawsuit it lobbed against Terix and Maintech that alleged they’d duped users by saying they were allowed to fix and update Solaris. According to Oracle, Terix, with Maintech’s knowledge …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh the irony

    They do the *EXACT SAME THING* to Redhat and sue anyone who does it to them.

    1. frank ly

      Re: Oh the irony

      That's 'hypocrisy' actually. If Red Hat sued them and won, that would be ironic.

    2. An0n C0w4rd

      Re: Oh the irony

      The difference is that under the GPL, they can do that to RedHat because the code is open source. Just like CentOS can ship RHEL without any fees whatsoever - they just can't call it RHEL.

      Solaris isn't permissively licensed and therefore the situations are not as similar as your comment suggests.

      1. JEDIDIAH
        Devil

        Re: Oh the irony

        It's perfectly comparable. Being the original manufacturer doesn't mean that you can claim exclusive rights to service end user devices. In classic form, this software robber baron is trying to claim rights it doesn't really have. It's trying to lay claim things to things it would be laughed at for suggesting with actual property (as opposed to imaginary property).

        1. Billl

          Re: Oh the irony

          "It's perfectly comparable. "

          I disagree. Oracle does not just resell RedHat and call it their own, or state that they are a RedHat Authorized Service Partner. Oracle takes CentOS, repackages it and sells it under the name of OEL. If Terix had taken OpenSolaris and repackaged it under the name of TerixOS, then there would be similarity, and your arguments would have merit.

          I know there is a lot of Oracle hatred here, but let's be open/fair minded about it.

      2. Lars Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Oh the irony

        @ An0n C0w4rd, Please, this has nothing to do with the GPL (General Public License), and please do not feel bad about it when you did not understand it.

        This is not about the Linux kernel and its GPL licence and altering the kernel at all. This is about a company producing "washing machines", claiming nobody else has the right to service them. This is very common when buying a new car, you receive a certain service guarantee. Among the small and perhaps not so small text you are understand to service your car at authorized service points. If not, you will loose your guarantee. And that is OK. What Oracle is claiming is that nobody has the right to service their "washing machine" and consequently you have no rights either. Silly stuff, and claims like this happen only in a market that is "new". And that "new" seems to go on forever, this judge, however, GOT IT. There is this old saying "innocent until proven guilty" but business to day is about "break any law until found guilty" then complain, pay, and do the lobbying until found innocent.

        1. Tim Bates

          Re: Oh the irony

          "This is about a company producing "washing machines", claiming nobody else has the right to service them."

          Yeah, that's how I was reading it too... Although I was thinking it would be more like MS suing a small computer repair chain that isn't an MS partner simply because they assist users in getting Windows Updates installed.

          1. Billl

            Re: Oh the irony

            If I was repairing Maytag Washing Machines and claiming that I was an authorized service rep, then yes that would be comparable. Or if I were going to Maytags warehouse, stealing their parts, then claiming that I used only Maytag OEM Parts, then yes that would be comparable.

            Terix is accused of stealing Oracle Patches, technotes, etc, and passing them off to their customers.

            Oracle puts the time and money into creating technical notes, creating patches, etc, and Terix is getting paid for them. Whether you see value in these things or not (Terix and their customers did), it is not honest business practices.

            As Terix stated themselves -- to paraphrase "..that would be dishonest."

        2. KjetilS

          Re: Oh the irony

          Among the small and perhaps not so small text you are understand to service your car at authorized service points. If not, you will loose your guarantee. And that is OK.

          Actually, in Europe, that's NOT OK. EU has ruled that any capable service point is allowed to service any car, and the manufacturer is explicitly not allowed to drop your guarantee if you use independent garages.

          1. Tom 13

            Re: Actually, in Europe

            I think he is mistaken in the US as well. That doesn't stop people who routinely buy and sell politicians from claiming otherwise to promote their business.

        3. Dr. Mouse

          Re: Oh the irony

          This is about a company producing "washing machines", claiming nobody else has the right to service them.

          Not quite.

          This particular type of case is a little different in a few ways. Taking the washing machine example, you have a washing machine and they find a fault. The company make a fix for it, spending time and money to redesign a circuit board, say.

          Now we have to make the assumption that this machine is out of any warranty period, so the customer has the choice of paying for extended warranty, either with them or one of their approved service agents. If they do this and the fault appears, the service agent will swap out the board for the fixed version.

          Now, another company comes along and starts offering extended warranty. They cannot buy the fixed board to fit, so they get hold of the design and make their own copies to fit to their customers' washing machines. They also say that they are approved service agent.

          I will say that I don't like the way Oracle work, but I think this example is closer to this case (from Oracle's point of view).

          1. Billl

            Re: Oh the irony

            "They cannot buy the fixed board to fit, so they get hold of the design and make their own copies to fit to their customers' washing machines. "

            Not quite. In this case it would be more like they "broke into the washing machine companies warehouse, stole the parts, and then put them in their customers machines."

            They did not make their own copies of the fixes, they were accused of downloading the fixes and then providing them to their customers.

  2. Oh Homer
    Paris Hilton

    El Reg now has a correspondent in Mongolia?

    Sorry, I'm so stunned that I didn't even read the story.

    1. Anonymous Dutch Coward

      Re: El Reg now has a correspondent in Mongolia?

      Well spotted. Wonder if there's local IT news of interest...

    2. James O'Shea

      Re: El Reg now has a correspondent in Mongolia?

      It appears that he's an independent IT consultant and that he really, really, REALLY likes snow. (Which, I suppose, would be a Good Thing if you lived in Mongolia...) And, unlike many geeks, girls. Or at least can get them to appear in pix with him. https://twitter.com/vbayarsaikhan

      It is a great pity that I can't read Cyrillic, some of the pics down near the bottom look... interesting.

      1. Oh Homer
        Coffee/keyboard

        Re: El Reg now has a correspondent in Mongolia?

        You're right, some of those pics are fascinating. There's one of a culinary dish made from what appears to be a penis, and another featuring a pregnant woman who looks like she's about to give birth to an entire football team.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: El Reg now has a correspondent in Mongolia?

      Nice catch!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If I was for support I would certainly choose Oracle over Redhat due to

    a/ Oracle's support covers a number of products

    b/ Redhat support agents are as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

    For Solaris only, I would use OmniOS and their support options.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      RE: Oracle Support

      Hi, Long term Solaris user, first time caller ...

      Using Oracle (database) on Solaris (Operating System from Oracle nee Sun) and paying a f*ck load of money for the support for both systems I have to say that at best Oracle support is an enhanced Eliza program ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA )

      Me: I have a problem with a database query, it's going slow.

      Them: Ahh I see your problem, it's because the query takes too long.

      Me: I know that, and if I run it on another machine it runs really fast.

      Them: yes, in that case it runs really fast.

      Me: yes, I know, any idea why?

      Them: <long winded trying to find answer, and passing from pillar to post>

      Me: okay, I've managed to analyse every table in my system, and after doing that, and running the query I've managed to run it via the Enterprise Manager and get the query down to 1000th of it's original speed.

      Them: well that seems reasonable now, I'll close the case.

      ...

      I wouldn't mind so much except that this is pretty much the way all our support calls have ever gone, on a large variety of topics ... one time they took 4 weeks to come back with an answer why our database wouldn't boot on the Solaris system. Their advice was to upgrade to the newer version ... we had done that 4 weeks in the past because they couldn't tell us how to do it and it was the production system that was dead (reached a maximum database file size that was undocumented)

      Redhat are not alone in their utter uselessness.

  4. wikkity

    Support

    "Terix supports IBM, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Oracle"

    So Oracle is taking a company to court to stop them being able to support themselves?

    1. Tom 13

      Re: Support

      Not quite. Terix is being sued for facilitating a sub, who is not an authorized support company and the sub is being sued for impersonating an Oracle Support company.

      Don't think about it too hard. Sane people hurt themselves when they do. Most find understanding live-dead cats an order of magnitude easier.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well I guess they've got to find someway to make up the money they spent buying sun before solaris is well and truely dead. I can't remember the last time I heard of a major solaris project other than replacing them with some form of linux generally on VMWare.

  6. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Capitalism: One should try it from time to time

    Meanwhile, we have to do with the whole gamut from mercantilism to lawyer-fueled monopolism.

    And frankly, in Oracle's place, I would call this unlicensed support "terrorism", because it terrorizes Larry and one never knows to what shady, beturbaned underground figures the proceeds of this fly-by-night support might eventually go. Certainly not into the pocket of upstanding american companies that have nothing to hide.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Capitalism: One should try it from time to time

      The oracle has spoken: "the point of a free and competitive market is to give me a fair crack at achieving a powerful enough position that it would be better for that competition to cease forever. Better for whom, you ask? Well everything is connected, send not to know for whom the bell tolls old chap, I think it's safe to conclude that if I eat a whole suckling pig and then let rip an enormous fart then I've created a richer atmosphere for us both."

  7. ideapete

    Sorry Larry , Fujitsu still do a much better job with Solaris , always have always will do http://www.sparcproductdirectory.com/artic-2002-jan-pb.html

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