[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[Keith Parris]

On 8/2/2012 11:19 AM, JF Mezei wrote:
> Unless the actual contract between HP and Oracle is made public, we
> can't read the real text, check for dots on every i etc.

Every relevant piece of the contract wording has been made public in the 
court documents, and reiterated again in the preliminary judgment. See 
http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/us/en/systems/customer-oracle.html 
for all the gory details.

The critical piece of the Mark Hurd agreement between Oracle and HP was 
Paragraph 1:

"_Reaffirmation of the Oracle-HP Partnership._ Oracle and HP reaffirm 
their commitment to their longstanding strategic relationship and their 
mutual desire to support their mutual customers. Oracle will continue to 
offer its product suite on HP platforms, and HP will continue to support 
Oracle products (including Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM) on its 
hardware in a manner consistent with that partnership as it existed 
prior to Oracle's hiring of Hurd."

> Oracle wouldn't have signed such a contract binding it until end of
> sales unless there was enough money behind to warrant this.

Right. Oracle expected to make plenty of money selling Oracle software 
on HP hardware, and to benefit from HP's support for its products on HP 
hardware.

> You don't sign such a contract for a viable platform (since
 > such contract is not needed),

Sure you do, when the circumstances warrant it. This agreement was 
basically to continue to do business as usual despite the Mark Hurd 
situation, and Oracle's purchase of Sun. In the wording of Paragraph 1 
we can sense that Oracle may have been concerned about support for OEL 
by HP in light of competition with Red Hat, and for Oracle VM in light 
of HP VM. HP seems to have been concerned that Oracle software would 
continue to be supported on HP hardware in light of the Sun acquisition. 
And this agreement brought the lawsuit about Mark Hurd to an end. It had 
benefits for both parties.

 > and you don't sign "until end of sales" for a platform with a
 > dubious future.

They signed they would continue business "in a manner consistent with 
that partnership as it existed prior...". That had historically meant to 
continue porting and support even for a short period _after_ a chip 
reached end of life, because customers needed and would continue to pay 
for that porting effort and support, because they would continue to use 
the products for a while. And Itanium had certainly not reached end of life.

And its future wasn't dubious (after 2007), according to information 
from both HP and Intel, and confirmed in the court documents, including 
HP-internal e-mails, and testimony from Intel. At this point, it's clear 
it only became dubious in Oracle's wishful thinking, after they acquired 
the Sun hardware business, which top Oracle sales executive Keith Block 
described as "the dog ... it's dead dead dead" and a "pig with lipstick 
... at best" in http://www.scribd.com/doc/93811611/HP-Itanium-docs-pdf