More Court Trouble For Oracle: Now HP Is Suing Them

New submitter another random user writes "Oracle violated its contract with Hewlett-Packard (HP) after it decided that future versions of its database software would not support a line of HP servers, HP's lawyer has said in court." The issue at hand: Oracle agreed to support Itanium, and has since pulled support. "... Hewlett-Packard estimates it should be awarded more than $4 billion in damages, based on an extrapolation to 2020 that accounts for projected losses, said the person, who didn’t want to be identified because the court document containing the damages request is confidential." Oracle is using the Itanic defense: "In cross-examination today, Oracle attorney Dan Wall asked Livermore [HP board member] if she had heard Itanium called 'Itanic,' a reference to the 'Titanic' oceanliner sinking. 'I've heard lots of terms,' Livermore said. 'I understand the reference they are making and I don’t like it. It is not done by anyone I like or respect.'"

Comments

This is a year old

[DrEnter]

HP filed this case a year ago. They made opening statements in the trial today.

Re:This is a year old

[Galestar]

Parent should be modded up. Also, slashdot editors should get a stern talking to.

Karma

[binarylarry]

No, not the open source project "Karma" but "Karma" in the cosmic hippie sense.

I hope HP takes them to the cleaners. And they aren't even being patent trolls, it genuinely sounds like Uncle Larry Douchebag screwed them over.

Go HP!

(Sorry HP, your products still suck... but your lawsuit is AWESOME!)

Re:Karma

[Anonymous Coward]

This 'serves them right' attitude on every one of these posts makes me believe most slashdot posters are petty. Not that I'm surprised....

Re:Karma

[X0563511]

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Go get em, HP!

Re:Karma

[Jeng]

Habit 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less

Re:Karma

[X0563511]

I personally feel Google is the lesser evil of the three being talked about. HP's in the middle, hence more tolerable than Oracle, which I wish would go away and stop fucking up perfectly good technologies.

Re:Karma

[HiThere]

FWIW, they just tried to claim that APIs could be copyrighted. That makes them the enemy of every programmer in the US, no matter who they work for, or in what environment. You may not know it, but if you're a US programmer, Oracle is your enemy.

It's true they've currently lost that case, but it will be appealed.

Scotsmans

[spire3661]

" 'I understand the reference they are making and I don’t like it. It is not done by anyone I like or respect.'"

'No true scotsman' argument

We have been calling it Itanic since day one, if people she knows or like aren't using that term, then shes in an echo chamber

Re:Scotsmans

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Apparently the answer is 'yes'; but are you really allowed to pout like a spoiled child who just lost a little-league game when you are on the board of a multibillion dollar multinational corporation? Even the anodyne say-nothing drivel issued by professional PR flacks is less obnoxious, and something cleverer would sound less horribly self-pitying.

Re:Scotsmans

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Yeah, if you don't like or respect anyone who calls it Itanic, you're an idiot, at the very least for basing a lack of respect on something as trivial as calling something a silly name.

But more than that, the name is apt. As a product, it's been nothing but trouble, and for what benefit? Forcing development of special compilers to support an architecture that does things a fraction better in an industry where computing power doubles on a semi-yearly basis while energy consumption remains flat or decreases, that's what. And for extra fun, it gets companies involved in lawsuits like this one, which benefits nobody but the lawyers. I won't try to argue that Itanium is a shit architecture or anything, I'm sure it's great when you don't have to deal with 20+ years of industry inertia, but I will say it's not even close to worth the trouble. Both HP and Oracle are going to lose money on this.

I understand that you can't admit even a possibility that the other side may be right in a court case, but I hope the HP board member doesn't actually live by that quote, because if that's the case, HP is a company run by people who refuse to learn from experience. It may be necessary to resort to hindsight to see that Itanium is a stupid idea, but tossing out that experience just because you think it makes you look stupid to not have been prescient back when there wasn't a great way to make the decision is just a recipe for sticking most strongly to your poorest guesses. This expectation of infallibility is one of the most poisonous parts of the business environment.

Re:Scotsmans

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Apparently the answer is 'yes'; but are you really allowed to pout like a spoiled child who just lost a little-league game when you are on the board of a multibillion dollar multinational corporation?

Not just allowed, but encouraged. The sense of entitlement that oozes from the CEO/BOD class is palpable. They are spoiled whiny children playing with enormously powerful toys, and best understood and treated as such. Expect them to do and say the most thoughtless, self-centered, and occasionally reprehensible things possible with no understanding of the consequences of their words and actions, and you won't be disappointed.

Re:Scotsmans

[nedlohs]

its an edge case, but the inferencing is pretty strong. " I know what is being referred to, and no true scotsman would call it that."

It's not a true scotsman argument because there is scotsman involved. There's no claim of all X do/are/belive/etc Y to defend a counter example with "A is not a true X".

What seals it is use of the word 'respect'. Her usage implies that anyone who would happen to refer to the product as 'Itanic' was contemptuous.

I don't think so, it just says no one she respects would use a disparaging term for a product she is involved with.

"Not having respect for" is also not the same as "being contemptuous of".

To me it reads as a acknowledgement that she has heard to the term before with an insult to the lawyer asking the question thrown in for good measure.

"Itanic Defense", bah!

[dkleinsc]

If they really want a good defense, they need to try this:

"Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense! Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major technology company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!"

i bet oracle had a get out of jail free card

[alen]

most contracts like this will have enough stipulations to make it fairly easy to pull out if things go south. i bet oracle put in all kinds of conditions like minimum sales numbers, etc

Friendship and business don't mix

[maroberts]

It wouldn't surprise me if Mark Hurd was a little lax in the clauses of the contract(s) with Oracle because he was dealing with his buddy Larry.

Of course, once Hurd no longer ran the ship, HP found the terms of their contracts offered them little protection from an uncooperative Oracle....

That said, I'm not convinced Itanium had a future - maybe it was time to change processors. The difference probably was that HP could have done it in a more graceful fashion if they were not being kicked in the ass by Oracle.

Kinda feel for Oracle here

[Just Some Guy]

It sounds like Oracle probably has some contractual obligations to live up to, and if so, HP deserves for them to uphold their end of the bargain. That said, I can understand Oracle's lack of desire to throw good money after bad. Itanic might not be dead, but it's comatose in a hospice with friends and family gathered around. Who'd want to spend much time and effort on a system that almost nobody wants?

Re:Kinda feel for Oracle here

[idontgno]

except for a few very-deep-pocketed legacy customers who are willing to pay crazy money to avoid migrating' stage....

So, what you're saying, is that HP is trying to serve the best kind of customers possible (from a marketing perspective): locked in, conservative, change-averse, and rich enough to afford it.

Can you really blame HP for getting upset with Oracle screwing with their money tree?

Especially with Oracle spouting lame crap like "Yeah, Intel said they'd support Itanium, and yeah, their product roadmap shows continued Itanium development for several years, but we know better than Intel. Really. Itanium is dead. Trust us."

Atinum

[PetiePooo]

I always wished that AMD had named their Athlon chips Atinum instead.

1. They came out roughly the same time as Itanium
2. They were 64-bit (x86-64 instead of Itanium's IA64)
3. They were touted as the next generation after x86 (as was IA-64)
4. The name started with A (for AMD, where Itanium started with I for Intel)
5. The name was a metal with the first phonem(s) removed (Pl-Atinum vs. T-Itanium)
6. Platinum is more costly and precious than Titanium

For those that lack the history, x86-64 (and the Athlon) was a resounding success; so much so that Intel begrudgingly followed AMD's lead for their consumer grade 64-bit chips. Intel's attempt to push Itanium and the IA64 architecture faltered with the much simpler and sensical upgrade path that AMD's lineup offered.

I wonder if litigious HP will sue AMD too, since the success of the X86-64 architecture contributed to Itanium's failure as a platform, and thus Oracle's withdrawal of support for it.

Re:Atinum

[binarylarry]

AMD also doomed us all to a few more decades of x86 brain damage.

Re:Atinum

[LoRdTAW]

I remember when the Alpha architecture once looked to be a promising alternative to x86. It had tons of OS support including Windows, BSD and Linux and there were ATX motherboards available. Benchmarks showed it beat the piss out of any x86 processor in terms of floating point performance (yet integer lagged slightly). Once the remains of DEC were bought by Compaq, Compaq didn't need another CPU arch and sold the Alpha IP to Intel who effectively killed it.

But the core Alpha team went to work for AMD and together with the K6 and K7 team created the Athlon which was for a while an Intel killer. So while AMD is still an x86 house, much of their success was thanks to the Alpha team.

Re:Atinum

[Just Some Guy]

AMD also doomed us all to a few more decades of x86 brain damage.

Such as...? I'm not a huge fan of the x86* ISAs, but they've been incredibly successful and few of us have to deal with their peculiarities by hand. So the instructions are harder to decode than on, say, Power. But what portion of the die is involved in the decode units, especially compared to huge blocks like the built-in 3D accelerated graphics on modern Intel CPUs? It also turns out that those hard-to-decode variable-length instructions are smaller - hence more easily cacheable - than their fixed-length counterparts.

But again, what does it really matter? Any language from C on up will hide almost all of the architectural details from programmers. Does x86-64's weird ISA affect the Java or Python code running on it? Nah. x86* may be crufty and inelegant, but it gets the job done.

So, let me get this straight...

[GGardner]

The company that killed WebOS and seriously considered selling off their whole PC business line is desperate to hang on to their Itanium business?

Re:So, let me get this straight...

[CodeHxr]

I don't think they're desperate to hang onto that business at all. It seems most likely that this is HP's way of making a failing business unit turn a hefty profit instead.

I hope these huge corporations all sue each other into bankruptcy and allow a new generation of corporations rise from the ashes, much wiser from the lessons learned from the dinosaurs that made themselves extinct before them.

HP is grasping at straws

[gstrickler]

According the the linked articles (haven't read the actual suit/complaint), HP is claiming that Oracle committed to continued support at part of the settlement of HPs suit over Oracle hiring former HP CEO Mark Hurd who resigned in the midst of a scandal for which HP would have almost certainly fired him.

There is no suggestion that HP paid Oracle any amount to develop or continue support of their software on HP's Itanium systems. So, if you cut through all the distractions and boil it down the the basics, HP is claiming the Oracle owes $500M to $4B for hiring Mark Hurd, the very same CEO HP would probably have fired.

Livermore acknowledged under questioning that Intel demanded $488 million over five years to keep up production of Itanium in a waning market for the chip. She said that to her knowledge, Oracle was never told about the arrangement with Intel.

Which helps explain why she "doesn't like" people who refer to it as Itanic.

Wow, that's the second time this week I've backed Oracle's position in a lawsuit (the other is against Lodsys, not the Google case)

Re:Why is Itanium still alive?

[rgbrenner]

Itanium IS dead. HP pays Intel to continue producing it, but HP is virtually the only customer for it.

This is why Oracle is being sued. They agreed to support their DB on Itanium so long as Intel produced it... so HP pays Intel to continue producing it, and that forces Oracle to continue supporting it. In other words, if it weren't for HP's payments, Oracle would have been able to drop support for it years ago. HP is trying to do an end-run around the EOL in their contract.

This suit may have been a year old ...

[Taco Cowboy]

... but Itanium being Itanic is much more than one year old

The Itanium chip is a damn sick joke

Someone ought to put it out of its own misery a long, long time ago !