Itanium & lawyers

[Arne Vajhøj]

Itanium is very dead.

But the lawyers are still making money.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/oracle-loses-bid-upend-hps-3-billion-win-2021-06-14/

Arne

[[e-mail]]

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Itanium is very dead.
But the lawyers are still making money.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/oracle-loses-bid-upend-hps-3-billion-win-2021-06-14/
Arne

LOL. It's particularly funny that the original cause of this contract (Bill Hurd) has now passed away, but Oracle is still stuck footing the bill for the IP gained.
That contract was one of the few things that HP actually got right in the Itanium fiasco(s).
It would would probably be cheaper for Oracle to try to buy their way out of the contract, now that Itanium is gasping for breath. Hopefully, it will be even cheaper after HPE EOLs all of the Itanium hardware platforms. Of course, HPE could also double-spite Oracle and extend the Itanium hardware EOL dates. :-))

Itanium will be even deader after OpenVMS x86-64 releases.
I plan to retire my two personal Itanium servers as soon as possible after production-grade OpenVMS x86-64 ships, due to the high self-support hardware costs. Just like I retired my personal Alphas after I bought my first cheap Itanium off Ebay. OpenVMS will then become just a few more VMs in my home lab environment.

[Simon Clubley]

Post by ***@gmail.com
Itanium will be even deader after OpenVMS x86-64 releases.

You can get freely available full-system emulators for pretty much every
active architecture these days apart from Itanium.

That says quite a lot in both the technical effort involved and in the
lack of interest in Itanium by the emulator writers.

Simon.

[Michael S]

Post by ***@gmail.com

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Itanium is very dead.
But the lawyers are still making money.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/oracle-loses-bid-upend-hps-3-billion-win-2021-06-14/
Arne

LOL. It's particularly funny that the original cause of this contract (Bill Hurd) has now passed away, but Oracle is still stuck footing the bill for the IP gained.
That contract was one of the few things that HP actually got right in the Itanium fiasco(s).

Mark Hurd

Post by ***@gmail.com
It would would probably be cheaper for Oracle to try to buy their way out of the contract, now that Itanium is gasping for breath. Hopefully, it will be even cheaper after HPE EOLs all of the Itanium hardware platforms. Of course, HPE could also double-spite Oracle and extend the Itanium hardware EOL dates. :-))
Itanium will be even deader after OpenVMS x86-64 releases.
I plan to retire my two personal Itanium servers as soon as possible after production-grade OpenVMS x86-64 ships, due to the high self-support hardware costs. Just like I retired my personal Alphas after I bought my first cheap Itanium off Ebay. OpenVMS will then become just a few more VMs in my home lab environment.

[John Dallman]

Post by ***@gmail.com
LOL. It's particularly funny that the original cause of this
contract (Mark Hurd) has now passed away, but Oracle is still stuck
footing the bill for the IP gained.
That contract was one of the few things that HP actually got right
in the Itanium fiasco(s).

Maybe. It meant other ISVs became more cautious about their agreements
with HP. Even though HP won, the case definitely contributed to my
employer's decision to drop Itanium support.

John

[Simon Clubley]

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Itanium is very dead.
But the lawyers are still making money.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/oracle-loses-bid-upend-hps-3-billion-win-2021-06-14/

Ouch.

Let's just hope Oracle doesn't throw a wobbly over Rdb as some form
of payback.

Simon.

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Itanium is very dead.
But the lawyers are still making money.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/oracle-loses-bid-upend-hps-3-billion-win-2021-06-14/

Ouch.
Let's just hope Oracle doesn't throw a wobbly over Rdb as some form
of payback.
Simon.

And thay would hurt HP, how? It's like kicking your dog
when your're mad at your wife. Probably only upset customers
that might be large Oracle users (on any platform) also.

[Simon Clubley]

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Itanium is very dead.
But the lawyers are still making money.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/oracle-loses-bid-upend-hps-3-billion-win-2021-06-14/

Ouch.
Let's just hope Oracle doesn't throw a wobbly over Rdb as some form
of payback.

And thay would hurt HP, how? It's like kicking your dog
when your're mad at your wife. Probably only upset customers
that might be large Oracle users (on any platform) also.

That's exactly my point. (That's why I called it throwing a wobbly.)

And those large normal Oracle customers who also use Rdb couldn't
exactly move off normal Oracle quickly as a result, even if the
management at those companies wanted to.

US$3 billion is one hell of a lot of money to pay, even for Oracle,
and that is _really_ going to go down badly with a certain Oracle founder.

Simon.

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Itanium is very dead.
But the lawyers are still making money.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/oracle-loses-bid-upend-hps-3-billion-win-2021-06-14/

Ouch.
Let's just hope Oracle doesn't throw a wobbly over Rdb as some form
of payback.

And thay would hurt HP, how? It's like kicking your dog
when your're mad at your wife. Probably only upset customers
that might be large Oracle users (on any platform) also.

That's exactly my point. (That's why I called it throwing a wobbly.)
And those large normal Oracle customers who also use Rdb couldn't
exactly move off normal Oracle quickly as a result, even if the
management at those companies wanted to.
US$3 billion is one hell of a lot of money to pay, even for Oracle,
and that is _really_ going to go down badly with a certain Oracle founder.
Simon.

OK. I agree that HPE trying to get more money out of the Itanium in
this way from Oracle is rather weird and that can easily back-fire
against other VMS users. Having said that, I do not see why Oracle
would fiddle with Rdb that makes them money every day.

[Chris Townley]

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Itanium is very dead.
But the lawyers are still making money.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/oracle-loses-bid-upend-hps-3-billion-win-2021-06-14/

Ouch.
Let's just hope Oracle doesn't throw a wobbly over Rdb as some form
of payback.

And thay would hurt HP, how? It's like kicking your dog
when your're mad at your wife. Probably only upset customers
that might be large Oracle users (on any platform) also.

That's exactly my point. (That's why I called it throwing a wobbly.)
And those large normal Oracle customers who also use Rdb couldn't
exactly move off normal Oracle quickly as a result, even if the
management at those companies wanted to.
US$3 billion is one hell of a lot of money to pay, even for Oracle,
and that is _really_ going to go down badly with a certain Oracle founder.
Simon.

OK. I agree that HPE trying to get more money out of the Itanium in
this way from Oracle is rather weird and that can easily back-fire
against other VMS users. Having said that, I do not see why Oracle
would fiddle with Rdb that makes them money every day.

Yes, but how much?

[John Dallman]

... HPE trying to get more money out of the Itanium in this way from
Oracle is rather weird ...

"They insulted us!"

John