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HP Seeks to Block Competitor From Revealing Its Pricing

Posted by timothy on from the whaddya-mean-the-price-tag's-showing? dept.

Matt Asay writes "On October 13, 2008, Hewlett-Packard sent a complaint to an open-source competitor, GroundWork, asking GroundWork to stop revealing HP's 'confidential' pricing. CNET has posted the letter, which indicates that HP doesn't want its pricing revealed, but which doesn't question the veracity of the pricing (which, not surprisingly, is 82 percent higher than the open-source vendor's). Does HP think its pricing is really a secret? It's publicly available at GSA Advantage. Guess what? HP software costs a lot of money, but presumably feels that it can justify the high prices. Why try to hide the pricing information?"

5 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. High Prices? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought that is what their name stands forâ¦

  2. Software feels it can justify the high prices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    How arrogant! What's next, software that feels it doesn't need programmers?

  3. Session Terminated by cjfs · · Score: 3, Funny

    That "publicly available at GSA Advantage" link from the article goes to:

    Session Terminated Your Advantage! or e-Buy session has been terminated for one of the following reasons: ...

    So was it really publicly available?

    Also they'd have to state that HP authorized it to be public on the GSA site. Otherwise you could just have two sites referencing each other saying the info is already public.

  4. Re:barbara streisand effect by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Funny

    When they dispatched the Pony Express to deliver the letter, did they send out a few extras to ensure that at least one made it past the velociraptors?

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    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  5. I picture a world / asteroid where.. by easyTree · · Score: 2, Funny

    All the lawyers, marketeers and traffic wardens could live in 'harmony'.. then the rest of us can get on with doing other things..

    Mmmm.. *warm fuzzy feeling often exerienced during waking*

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    Requiem for the American Dream