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SAP To Plead Guilty For Downloading Oracle Software
itwbennett writes "Slashdot readers will remember that on Sept. 1, a federal judge overturned a $1.3 billion judgment and approved SAP's request that Oracle accept a lower award of $272 million. Now, according to court documents filed this week, former SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow will plead guilty to criminal charges of copyright infringement for downloading software from Oracle's servers. Sentencing will take place at a hearing on Sept. 14."
That would've bankrupted them.
From what I can tell, it's not that they downloaded freely available software; it's that they downloaded software behind a paywall - certain patches, etc, only available via a support contract.
I believe the crux of the issue would be that SAP was downloading and providing those patches to other companies wholesale, in the course of providing a competing service. So, SAP had a support contract with Oracle, and then using the resources of that support contract to provide services that allowed other companies to get all the benefits of the support contract without paying for it.
I can see why Oracle might be a little grumpy about this. It would be different if SAP was making their own patches and support documents and providing those.
The DOJ is also likely involved because of the sheer dollar amount of the support contracts that they allowed customers to circumvent buying.
I can see criminal charges for this "Unauthorized Access to a Protected Computer with Intent to Defraud and Obtaining Something of Value" but this "criminal infringement of a copyright"? Why do I have the feeling their "access to the protected computer" was a machine containing content they once shared using the same passwords they had when they had a partnership with Oracle? It is that feeling one gets when a corporate spokes person opens their mouth. ~Shiver~ And wtf is up with criminal infringement of a copyright? Did they hold a gun to someone's head while infringing? Sure, sue the fuck out of them for making money off of your work but criminal charges?!?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I download stuff from Oracle all the time. No shit! How long before we find out it is the same bullshit Cisco pulled with updates to equipment? ie. "You downloaded an update of IOS for the hardware you bought without paying for an account to access the updates" == "You downloaded updates for OCI" or whatever the fuck it was they used.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
First, it wasn't "SAP" but a support company SAP bought, then discovered was doing this after the deal was done. Oracle waited to sue SAP and not the tiny little company SAP bought.
The company was using it's one customer support connection to Oracle's website to support OTHER ORACLE CUSTOMERS that needed security patches locked behind a paywall.
Unfortunately, the suit doesn't address the real problem.. Of Oracle structuring "support" rates as their own little piggy bank... How many companies have "maintenance" as X% of "current market price" ... Then jack that price to 200% and grant "discounts" to anybody shopping for NEW licenses.
My own company ran into this with some other companies software that wanted more for "hardware transfer" and " maintenance" in one year than we paid for the initial license. The yearly "20%" is more like 50% of what we initially paid...
Should alert the purchasing managers that they need to limit "yearly increase" to 5% or an audit of their "sold" pricing for the year. Gotta be clever! The FUN companies are ones that want you to may maintenance AND separately for UPGRADES.
I once worked for a company that was sort of in that position. We were supposed to become Oracle reseller and we'd gone through all the steps of becoming a reseller but one: taking the exam on Oracle licensing policies.
Nobody on the sales team wanted to take the exam, but everyone assumed that because they *intended* to give Oracle the money *eventually*, it would be OK to go ahead and sell the product. Technicians were going onto customer sites with CDs or Oracle products they'd burned and were installing it assuming everything would be OK.
Since I was the only person who didn't think everything would be OK, I stepped in and took the exam. First I had to watch about four hours of "training videos" (this is not an exaggeration). These were films of the extremely un-charismatic Oracle licensing committee members sitting around a conference table discussing (in a monotone) all the things that you weren't allowed to do. There was no other option because there was no written documentation of the policies available for those of us who like to read. It wasn't hard to ace the exam, though. You could figure out most of the things by remembering that Oracle's philosophy is to never give a sucker a break.
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