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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.'"
Hello,
As a consultant for several large companies, I'd always done my work on
Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do
some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was
very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our
exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several technical challenges along the way
(specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we
were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process
went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were
considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our surprise when we were informed by a lawyer that
we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It
was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something
called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license
states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available.
Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money
we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would
now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any
products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to
its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever
use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult
position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with
another solution. Although it was tough to do, there really was no
option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive
with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually
guarantee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my
experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my
associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to
something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source".
Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure
it remains only a bit player.
Thank you for your time.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
... 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?
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.
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