[Info-vax] Oracle loses appeal in HP/Oracle Lawsuit

[Neil Rieck]

On Thursday, February 14, 2013 8:01:49 AM UTC-5, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article <1d4407f1-12af-4f43-9d3d-737d262da538 at googlegroups.com>,
> 
> 	Neil Rieck <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> writes:
> 
> >> 
> 
> >> As we become more and more like the EU.  Where else can a company be
> 
> >> ordered to lose money in a time of very hard economics.
> 
> >> 
> 
> > With all due respect, this has nothing to do with the US becoming like the EU. Almost every western country allows monopolistic behavior but this comes with a huge amount of government oversight. When companies get too big, they can either live with the oversight (like the telcos did for over 100 years) or break up their companies so they are no longer considered a monopoly.
> 
> 
> 
> There is no comparison between the business model of a company like
> 
> Oracle and the early Bell telephone.  Bell relied on a very limited
> 
> resource (just how many cables do you think can be strung down a
> 
> single city street?)  And there are many who thnk granting special
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> priveledges to supposed "Public Utilities" is just plain wrong.
> 
> 
> 
> > No one can deny the fact that Oracle is king of the relational database world because they've got the best software in that marketplace (IMHO). 
> 
> 
> 
> And that somehow makes them a monopoly?  Microsoft has a even stronger
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> stranglehold on their niche and I don't see anyone calling them a
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> monopoly.
> 
> 
> 
> > But they raised more than a few government eyebrows when the acquired MySQL (probably with the intention of slowing its development). But in the end, no one really cared because there were other open alternatives available, like MariaDB, which most Linux distros are moving to now. 
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> 
> 
> Or maybe they didn't care because MySQL was a piece of crap.  It is the
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> database of choice for people who know nothing about databases.
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> 
> 
> >But when Oracle bought SUN, then said they were discontinuing a software product found on the hardware of one of their former business partners (probably with the intention of killing the competition), they were guilty of monopolistic behavior. 
> 
> 
> 
> That is absurd.  There were plenty of alternatives.  Why is it that when
> 
> Alpha was bing killed all people here could say was what a a pile of
> 
> steaming dung the Itanium was and now that it is the only game in town
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> for VMS people here sing its praises?  Nothing changed.  It was a mistake.
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> It is a mistake.  It will always be a mistake.  HP's choice not withstanding.
> 
> 
> 
> > This kind of behavior could only attract anti-trust regulators although it appears absent in this instance (although I bet it is being discussed in private).
> 
> 
> 
> Then why is the same not applied to other companies?  Cisco bought
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> Linksys to eliminate a competitor.  How many companies has MS bought
> 
> to get them out of the game?  Not to mention offering "free" products
> 
> intended to drive other competitors out of the market.
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> 
> 
> > Hypothetically speaking, if Oracle still wants to stop software development for Itanium, they would first need to sell SUN.
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> 
> 
> I fail to see any releveance between the two.  People who buy Sparc are
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> unlikely to choose Itanium as an alternative and vice versa.
> 
> 
> 
> > p.s. I am fond of ending blog posts with the humble phrase "Just my 2-cents worth" but in seeing your recent sign-off I was reminded of the fact that Canada will soon discontinue the penny. While the penny will be in circulation for quite some time, businesses have been instructed to either round up or down as they see fit. While "Just my 0-cents" may be appropriate in my case, it looks too weird so let me sign off with...
> 
> > Just my 5-cents worth (apologies to Lucy and Charlie Brown)
> 
> > Neil Rieck
> 
> > Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
> 
> > Ontario, Canada.
> 
> > http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/OpenVMS.html
> 
> >  
> 
> 
> 
> bill
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
> 
> billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
> 
> University of Scranton   |
> 
> Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>

On this issue I am afraid you are engaging in willful thinking. I "think" it was the Lou Gerstner book (Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?) where he mentions something about IBM's anti-trust lawyers being at every "decision making" meeting (before he came along) just to ensure that IBM never caused themselves to be put through the government wringer again as happened previously in the 1970s. Thresholds may have changed since then, but any large-cap American company back then only needed 50% of the the marketplace to attract government attention. I saw a similar quote in a book about GM when, in the 1950s, GM had 54% of the U.S. market (hard to believe after the TARP related bail out, eh?).

But on a different note, I recently heard a lecture where the speaker mentioned what Asian companies really thought about dealing with western companies. [that we're all stupid because we cannibalistically destroy each other then outsource the remains to them, etc.] Well, if you look at how American CPU manufacturers destroyed each other (M68K, PA-RISC, Alpha, and possibly now Itanium spring to mind) which left one British Company (ARM Holdings) standing holding the lion's share of intellectual property translated in silicon square footage, then I can sort of see the point. In countries like Japan, MITI has morphed into METI, but member companies would never turn against their own. I can only assume (always a dangerous word) that Korea, China, Taiwan,and India have similar self serving organizations. So I wonder when western companies are going to wake up to this fact.

Just food for thought.

NSR