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Oracle To Pay US Almost $200M To Resolve False Claims Lawsuit
coondoggie writes "In what it says is the largest False Claims Act settlement it has ever collected, the US General Services Administration will get $199.5 million plus interest from Oracle for 'failing to meet their contractual obligations.' According to the US Department of Justice, 'the settlement resolves allegations that, in contract negotiations and over the course of the contract's administration, Oracle knowingly failed to meet its contractual obligations to provide GSA with current, accurate and complete information about its commercial sales practices, including discounts offered to other customers, and that Oracle knowingly made false statements to GSA about its sales practices and discounts.'"
OMFG yay
Sadly, this business practice indicates a financial incentive for oracle to lie to high profile clients in order to charge them extra.
If only other high profile clients would take heed of this and avoid oracle like plague, rather than thinking the practice will stop as a result of this settlement.
Business practices exist as the basis by which that company operates. Being shown to be a defrauder like this, shows that oracle relies on such practices, and are not likely to change.
(Quite frankly, given the sociopathic nature of oracle's ceo, I am not surprised by this development.)
I recently uninstalled the last of my Oracle products. I posted the following reason on their exit survey:
"On several recent occasions, Oracle has unabashedly put greed before conscience in their treatment of their customers and others in our industry. Unfortunately for Oracle, such brazen and unconscionable behavior is a remnant of a past tolerant of such corporate narcissism. That time is at an end; and Oracle will wither and vanish into extinction as surely as other corporate dinosaurs unless it swiftly nurtures a culture of ethical conduct."
GPL only kicks in if you start distributing (e.g. selling) the software. If the software is only for you/client/whatever - it doesn't really matter. My advice - get a new lawyer, because this one sucks.
I thought the "source or GTFO" nature of the GPL only applied if you distributed the software?
Keeping a private modified repo that you don't distribute, as you mentioned above, would not compell you to release the source, as far as I can tell.
Now, if you were delivering enterprise software as a product based on gpl code, you are totally boned.
When do I get my check? ...What, the government keeps the money?? And Oracle... raises their prices to compensate?? So as an Oracle customer, what did *I* do to deserve this?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
So, to summarize: - your hard work is worth money and protection - linux developers hard work is not worth money nor protection - access to linux source code is appealing to you - access to your source code is theft Way to go, hypocrite.
Resistance is futile, most of Oracle's significant clients are also "greedy corporate dinosaurs".
Oracle never cared about little players like you.
"The DoJ also noted that the settlement resolves a lawsuit filed on behalf of the US government by former Oracle employee, Paul Frascella, who will receive $40 million as his share of the recovery in the case. Under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act, private citizens can bring lawsuits on behalf of the United States and share in any recovery obtained by the government."
So, when selling to the government, Oracle is required to disclose discounts it gives to other customers. Which leaves me asking: why only the government? Seems to me markets would generally benefit from more transparency, both in terms of efficiency and legal compliance. What possible reason is there not to disclose terms of sales, discounts, etc. between any two companies? Why do we allow this information to remain proprietary? Conservatives and free market folks should be up in arms, since efficient markets require information.
And it wouldn't be hard to implement these days. If you are required to disclose a certain type of contract, you have to have done so when you conclude it in order for it to be legally enforceable.
Nice bit of FUD you have there... and how is this related to this post? Oh, right. It doesn't!
You can modify the Kernel and do everything else you stated under the GPL and don't need to release your changes publicly if it's for internal use only. It's only if you started selling the product outside that you would need to do so. The fact that you didn't know the kernel was even copyrighted under the GPL or what the GPL says before you supposedly started means that either your a grossly negligent or an idiot.
That said, my suggestion would be to hire a better lawyer... preferably one who can read.
You might also want to ask Steve Ballmer to give you some new talking points as the one's you've covered here for him are so blatantly not true they will only get you laughed at. For example, defragging ext2 is generally not necessary, because it was designed robustly and doesn't have inherent fragmentation problems that all of Microsoft's poorly designed filesystems do, however you can defrag it
At a previous employer, we were a moderately sized company with a significant Oracle DB back-end behind an online platform. While the relationship had been rather professional in the beginning, Oracle's sales tactics over the years have really taken a turn to the point of being beyond what I ever saw from Microsoft in the 90's. As an existing DB customer, we were looking for an SSO solution to the platform. Oracle has such a bundle, and in exchange for buying the solution, our VP negotiated for them to provide several weeks of consulting services to help implement. Months later, it was a disaster (its a hodgepodge of companies they have purchased over the years and nothing overly coherent) and so the org decided to completely abort and go in another direction. We agreed to part ways and let them keep the up front cost and first year of support, but come the end of our support year, asked to remove the recurring support option on our contract for this software we no longer used. The two sales folks in charge of our contract were afraid of looking like they lost an option, and decided to strong-arm and said that if we pushed to have this line item removed, they would increase the support costs of all the remaining items we continued to use beyond what we would pay if we just kept the line item. We were now forced to continue to pay for a completely separate SKU/product we were not using if we wished to maintain consistent terms on the Oracle DB we could not easily displace.
And if you want to see the shit they have been pulling with CPU's going multi-core and beyond over the past several years, look up the crap they pulled with HP when they tried to provide a BIOS option to lock a multicore CPU down to a single one to allow the server to remain Oracle compliant. Their explicit BIOS notes said as much at one point. Hint: F_ck Oracle again. You have no choice in this model of growing core density but to continue to pay more to Oracle, even if you hard-limit the cores down.
Holy shit, did you fall hard for a truly ancient troll or what?!?!
An Oracle salesperson lied? That has to be the first time. Oracle never lies.
They named themselves after a rather deceitful figure from Greek mythology so this is sort of funny to see them proven to be a bunch of lying turds.
Every time I have ever dealt with Oracle I was left with a foul taste in my mouth.
GPL = General Public License not Gnu Protective License as you state.
you can learn more about GPL and how it help's people and company at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html
and the FAQ is at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
I'm sure they read it.
Oracle is unpopular in many shops. Being a dick to all your customers actually does turn them away, even the greedy amorphous customers known as corporations.
Oracle's main source of revenue in the past 10 or so years has been buying applications that many people are firmly committed to, like PeopleSoft and Weblogic, then jacking up the licensing and maintenance fees. Customers hate it when you do that.
That's the main driver that's pushing people away from their software. When Oracle buys a company, move away from that company's software as quickly as possible.
I cant believe this ancient troll - cmon guys this was doing the round in 2001! - actually worked.
What next, Natalie Portman in hot grits?
You've had that same long chunk of text in your paste buffer for, what, about 12 years now?
I'm impressed.
Check out Larry's Open World Kenote:
http://www.oracle.com/openworld/live/on-demand/index.html
If you want a really good laugh go to the last 15-20 minutes when he's demo'ing the Oracle social network.
This guy has lost the plot if he thinks that anyone believes that Fusion apps is anything but a big fat pile of bloatware. Oh so it's GA now? where on their apps download page can I download Fusion Apps?
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/indexes/downloads/index.html#apps
Ha ha funny, at least seven years link (see the comments), but maybe even older due to the 'token ring' mention
unfortunately, in order to really make a lasting impression on companies that pull shit like this, you have to do real damage to them. make them pay 20% of their net worth and inform them it will be double that next time and they wont make the mistake of pulling that shit again. if that happened, everyone involved would likely get tossed to the wolves.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
People people people why all the hate... enh, I'm sorry I can't say that with a straight face.
Ok so seriously, I understand what all of you are saying. So let's say Ellison says to his stockholders "We got hit with a $200M fine from the government for immoral practices, congress with kittens, and generally being a dick. I personally know I'm a dick, the government caught me red handed massaging my neck to orgasm, and so being as we are demonstrably guilty, I think this fine should come directly out of the company earnings, instead of our usual practice of considering fines to be overhead and raising prices to compensate."
He'd be out of power before he completed the sentence.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Moron - you don't need to publish changes to the code, unless and until you PUBLISH those changes. You're doing inhouse stuff? Change away. Oh - you want to SELL the stuff you've altered? Well, then, yeah, you have to make the source code available to your customers. Oh, you say that's unacceptable? Tough noogies, little cretin.
Tell you what - why don't you go out and design your own kernel, and your own operating system? A really smart bunch of people like you claim to work with shouldn't even find that to be a challenge.
Oh, what's that you say? You're not smart people at all? You were only attempting to exploit other people's work? Oh - I see. You're really a bunch of losers. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe you should go into another line of work. Even losers can find work digging ditches and cleaning septic tanks. Good luck in your new careers!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Don't feed the trolls, moron. You've been here long enough to know better.
... are the agencies that overpaid Oracle, probably by (a lot) more than the amount of the settlement. The funds will be returned to the general revenue, and the government programs Oracle ripped off will never be reimbursed. That means Johnny doesn't have as many bullets to shoot at Al Qaeda, because the logistics chain is out the extra money they paid Oracle. It also means that contractor Jane got laid off, because the money to pay her went to Oracle instead.
Resistance is futile, most of Oracle's significant clients are also "greedy corporate dinosaurs".
Oracle never cared about little players like you.
My 60000+ employee company is in the process of doing the same thing for the same reason. I have a friend involved in the decision-making process that's led to us replacing the Peoplesoft systems Oracle acquired. Oracle sent a team to try to negotiate terms that would keep our business - they were told we don't trust them and won't be doing any business with them in the future. They definitely cared to lose a mega-player like us.
Well said. Larry is the *emperor* of bait-n-switch. I see Oracle customers doing everything in their power to gnaw their way free.
...that the tens of thousands of people in the Oracle Sales organization have no idea what discounts are being given to all their customers. My dozen or more Oracle reps don't even know what each of them has sold me over the last 2 years. Oracle has the most dysfunctional and customer-unfriendly Sales organization in the industry. I don't want different Sales reps for Databases, ERP Apps, Hyperion, Middleware, Identity Management, etc, etc AND I don't want to be shifted around from an industry vertical account to a strategic account to a regional account to gawd knows where every 6 months. I want ONE Oracle sales rep! Is that so hard to comprehend??? Apparently, yes, it is...
Nice.
One question, do you make a habit of saving your exit survey responses?
Earliest I can find with a quick google search is 2002: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=26128&cid=2831897
It's even been translated to Italian! http://punto-informatico.it/c.aspx?i=174594&m=174632
They'll pass the price on to their locked-in customers, outsource another few divisions to Elbonia, or just find more ways to avoid paying corporate tax. Either way, it won't change their behaviour one whit: it's just the cost of doing business.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
You have it exactly. The only down side to the GPL is that if you sell the binary to just one person you have to give them the code, and they can give the code to everyone. That is a real down side, and if it affects your particular project it can be a good reason not to use the GPL.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Q) What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?
A) God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.
...somebody forgot to pay their protection money to some Congressional committee member. Defense, telecom, and other seasoned players know that this is part of the game. Oracle needs to put on their big-boy pants and step up to the plate if they want to play in this league.
Any way to see what the discounts, etc were that are part of this contract? Freedom of Information request?
No, he just completely pulled it out of his ass. It's also fucking full of unnecessary words meant to embellish his point. Typical slashfaggery.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm