Larry Ellison, Oracle and litigation: A business that's not a business

>And now, this week, Oracle was ordered to pay Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) $3bn

Wow that is probably more than HP made total on its Itanium misadventure.

I think it's a bad sign when any company appears to go down the route of litigation to try to gain income rather than innovate and win new customers with good services and products. The last lot try that stunt was the SCO Group and it didn't end well for them.

Oracle?

That's still going on?

It isn't IT that attracts huge legal disputes, it's IP.

IP is a revenue stream for work already done and so people argue over it like the big pot of money that, in practical terms, it is.

Businesses which sell goods and services that require current effort to deliver have less cash flow and so don't spend nearly so much on lawyers.

The software business is much closer to the music industry than it is to other IT companies in this respect. While both are grubby businesses it's not a coincidence that the largest firms are the ones that aggressively defend their IP.

"Clearly Oracle doesn't have enough more lawyers... they should get more... and clearly the ones they have aren't good enough... they should get more expensive ones!"

Lawyers in the US are the modern equivalent of armed conflict. In Russia businesses often settle disputes with hitmen, so lawyers are actually an improvement.

If the Second Amendment was itself amended to "in order that shakedowns shall be well regulated, the right of CEOs to arm themselves with lawyers shall not be infringed", it might be an improvement.

Shades of SCO

The Google case, a different type of suit, remember, seems dead – for now at least.

I think this case will roll on like the SCO case. Ths only difference is that both sides have cash to continue the fight (at the moment).

True

Oracle always used to win these lawsuits.... Now they cannot even convince a jury that Itanic was dead regardless of what Oracle did or did not do. They were steamrolled in that Google lawsuit as well, but they had to know that was a long shot... probably just hoping Google threw some cash at them to go away.

The FBI is investigating Oracle !

Oracles being sued by the State of Oregon over the failed Health care exchange they screwed up.

And this from the Wiki page :

In March 2014, the FBI announced it was launching an investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing related to the failed development of the site.[5] Subpoenas were issued in May 2014 by a grand jury. [18]

The dispute has led to six lawsuits, including the main case playing out in Marion County Circuit Court, in which the state has accused Oracle of fraud and racketeering and is seeking $6.5 billion in damages.

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2016/04/oregon_vs_oracle_war_gets_pers.html

And I'm sure there is more crap coming from these lowlifes at Oracle. They have launched several counter suits. I for one, would love to see these Jackles locked up.

Oracle is a bad word in our workplace.

We've had so many meetings with them over the years on licensing, it's probably 10 times more convoluted than M$ licensing, which says a lot.

I've never had to pull a CPU from a Server until we were told about certain gotcha's in Oracle licensing.

Now that EBS is phased out, we are so, so happy and our budget looks healthy for once.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if they try sue us for our backups that we tend to keep for 7 years for tax reasons (and because our Finance department are super an*l on keeping stuff for years)

After 10 years at Sun, I had the misfortune of being there when Oracle took it over. Oracle was the worst employer I had since graduating college. After 2 years, I fled screaming. I could talk for two hours on what a mess that company is, but I'll sum it up with: Anyone who finds themselves in any way dependent on Oracle, and is not executing plans to sever that dependency, is a fool.