HP Asks Judge To Enforce Itanium Contract Vs. Oracle 124
Dupple writes with this quote from a Reuters report:
"Hewlett-Packard Co told a judge on Tuesday that Oracle Corp should be ordered to make its software available on HP's Itanium-based servers for as long as HP sells them. Lawyers for HP and Oracle presented closing arguments in a California state court for the first phase in a bitter lawsuit between the two tech giants. ... Oracle decided to stop developing software for use with Itanium last year, saying Intel made it clear that the chip was nearing the end of its life and was shifting its focus to its x86 microprocessor. But HP said it had an agreement with Oracle that support for Itanium would continue, without which the equipment using the chip would become obsolete. HP said that commitment was affirmed when it settled a lawsuit over Oracle's hiring of ousted HP chief executive Mark Hurd. HP seeks up to $4 billion in damages."
The ghost of Ken Olsen called, (Score:5, Insightful)
Existing Customers (Score:5, Insightful)
HP sold Itanium boxes to customers who use them to run Oracle. Oracle stops supporting Itanium and the customers are stuck holding computers that don't do what they paid for them to do.
There's probably penalties in HPs contracts with their customers in the event of such a circumstance. Or maybe they just don't want their customers to feel like HP screwed them.
damages per processor ... WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you even think of damages in terms of "per processor shipped" (and, even worse, in terms of annual processor shipments)? Even assuming the estimates you refer to are accurate, the computation you make is meaningless.
Re:Why exactly ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering that ditching Itanic would mean porting HP-UX, NonStop OS, and VMS, it would be a non-trivial exercise. First, you have to port the OS. Then you have to either write a compatibility layer (similar to Apple's Rosetta), or port all of the applications, including those you didn't write yourself. Given the tendency of business to not want to spend more money than they have to, the former is more likely in the short term.
There's also the political issues involved with abandoning a significant hardware lineup. Sure, there was a seven year overlap between Itanic and PA-RISC on the HP-UX side, but no customer is going to be happy about such a move. Compare with IBM; they've been doing POWER for two decades, and no end in sight. Or Oracle and SPARC, for that matter.
In my blunt opinion, if HP tries to move HP-UX to x86, it'll mark a major marketing campaign from IBM and Oracle about a company that won't stand behind its hardware, and they will bleed (more) marketshare.
This whole thing is not going to end well.
Re:HP Itanium Support (Score:3, Insightful)
And that's HP's problem, not Oracle's. HP didn't pay Oracle to develop, or maintain their software for HP systems. Oracle did it because they thought it was good business. All of the Itanium [wikipedia.org] sales projections over the years have been reduced by at least an order of magnitude. Now, with Itanic continuing to sink, Oracle has changed it's mind.
$4B is insane, it's nearly the entire Itanium market. And the claim that Oracle would agree to a contract that could cost them $4B as part of the settlement of a lawsuit over hiring a HP's ex-CEO, who resigned amid a scandal of his own making, a CEO who would almost certainly have been fired (and probably was told to retire), is simply absurd. No, HP is simply trying to keep a sinking ship afloat and trying to make Oracle stay and help bail water.
Re:Why exactly ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you kidding? Sparc and PPC are plenty of competition for HP in the server space. If anything, HP/UX has always been an ugly redheaded stepchild when it comes to Oracle support.
If you're running HP, you're already trying to smash a square peg into a round hole here.
That said: Oracle should still be held to any contracts it made.
Re:HP Itanium Support (Score:4, Insightful)
Oracle only gets out of the contract for development if the clause on it is unconscionable or otherwise unenforceable.
Unlike your average joe, Oracle has lawyers that they pay to go over this stuff and pick out and cross out the unenforceable and unconscionable stuff for revision before signing.
IANAL, but I trust Oracle hires good lawyers.
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BMO
Re:HP Itanium Support (Score:4, Insightful)
>I would say a $4B penalty claim in such a case is unconscionable, and not foreseeable.
No. That's not how it works. It's not whether the penalty is unconscionable. That's just HP asking for relief. They can ask for any number they want. But in cases like this, you always ask for more than what you need because it only gets adjusted down anyway.
You only get out of it if *the clause in the contract itself* is unconscionable or otherwise unenforceable. According to HP, Oracle signed a contract saying that Oracle would continue to support Itanium. HP is telling the court that to make them whole for Oracle to break the contract, it would be 4 billion to call it even, because that's what the projected damage would be, according to HP.
Whether the court agrees with that amount or not, the court has to first determine whether the clause itself was unconscionable or otherwise unenforceable. If it's a valid clause, it's just a matter of determining how much it would be to make HP "whole" for Oracle breaking the contract.
Proving the clause is unconscionable or otherwise unenforceable is a pretty high hurdle for Oracle to clear, since their lawyers are experienced in handling contracts like this and they should have known before signing that it was unconscionable. Proving this means that their lawyers were incompetent at the time of signing. Not proving it means that their current lawyers are incompetent.
THE CONTRACT IS INVALID BECAUSE I WAS DRUNK, YOUR HONOUR.
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BMO