[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[David Froble]

Keith Parris wrote:
> On 8/2/2012 9:26 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
>>  From what I read, the Hurd issue simply confirmed that a previous
>> contract was not ended. So the fine print and dots on the i would be in
>> the original contract, not in the Hurd agreement.
> 
> Actually, the Hurd Agreement confirmed that established practices (of 
> porting and release of new versions) would continue. So those historical 
> practices were effectively put into writing by Oracle and HP signing 
> that Agreement.
> 
> The court found HP had kept up its end of the bargain after the 
> Agreement, despite Oracle doing sneaky tricks like doubling the core 
> factor for Itanium (thus raising the price of Oracle on Itanium compared 
> with Sun).

Hey, fuel costs for Larry's jet goes up every year ....

I'd feel that such tactics do not win friends.  Nor do they work in all cases.

I'm sure there might be some systems out there that are purely Oracle Servers, doing 
nothing else, and for such it might be rather easy for a customer to switch.  A 
businessman looks at the bottom line, and doesn't much care about the technical issues. 
For such a system, perhaps Oracle will sell some Sun systems.

Not a simple world.  Some will learn to dislike Oracle, and some will say "that's the 
lowest price, get it".  And many somewhere in between.

While it probably won't mean much to very many people, by charging more for an Itanium 
core, Oracle is basically saying "Itanium is better".  Whether they actually mean it or 
not is another issue.

Having never gotten close to Oracle, I'm curious.  Is it better than the competition?  Is 
there some overriding reason to get and / or stick with Oracle?