Oracle loses appeal against $3bn payment to HPE over withdrawal of Itanium support

The Supreme Court of California has thrown out Oracle's appeal against a decision to award $3bn damages to HPE in a case which dates back a decade and relates to Big Red's commitment to develop on Itanium hardware. On Wednesday, the court denied a review of Oracle's appeal against a summary judgement, apparently without …

[Gene Cash]

I needed some good news this morning...

And there it is!

[Plest]

Re: I needed some good news this morning...

They get fined $3bn I'm making one guess where they will recover it from! Prepare for license hikes anywhere where an Oracle product is lurking including behind a lot of AWS backended cloud services.

While I like to see Larry's firm take a spanking, I'd put the champagne on ice for a while yet!

[DougMac]

Re: I needed some good news this morning...

How could you tell when Oracle is raising your rates due to this? Or when Larry needs a new yacht?

[IT Guy]

Re: I needed some good news this morning...

Paying the fine will probably be cheaper than the ongoing lawyer costs.

They can and will always up license fees...

[Vometia has insomnia. Again.]

Such mixed feelings

"Yay! Oracle lost!" which is always welcome; but somewhat tempered by "but HPE won." A classic case of "can't they both lose?"

[Swarthy]

Re: Such mixed feelings

The case ran for 10 years. They both did lose. The lawyers on the other hand....

[chasil]

Takeover

An Oracle acquisition of HPE might be a more straightforward solution.

I don't think there is anything left that could be considered anticompetetive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Takeover

HP should have bought Sun when they were tottering on the brink instead of letting Oracle snap them up. Would have avoided trashing their whole Unix Server business.

[Blank Reg]

Re: Such mixed feelings

HP backed Itanic, how much more of a loser could they be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Such mixed feelings

The architecture used in Itanium processors originated at HP.

[IT Guy]

Re: Such mixed feelings

The co-created Itanic, that is how much more!

[naive]

Re: Such mixed feelings

It is incredible HPE is awarded so much money for Oracle not supporting its database on a platform with a dead processor that was already obsolete 10 years ago. HP didn't even support HP9000 with HP/UX itself anymore in the 2010's, just milking the old cows who where s*ckered in buying this trash.

HP/UX embodies everything that gave Unix a bad name, a horrible rotting zombie from the 80's with many obscure non POSIX compliant commands, difficult procedures to change disks, a far cry from the Swiss refinement and precision AIX provides.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Such mixed feelings

> a far cry from the Swiss refinement and precision AIX provides.

Oh boy, you should have seen the code for LVM they produced, you wouldn't trust them speak you weight.

[Denarius]

Re: Such mixed feelings

AIX and POSIX compliant commands ? True, so long as one did not look at the AIX specific commands. OTGH, the AIX specific commands are, IMHO, better than the POSIX. However, as one who supported AIX, HPUX and Solaris back in the day, the elegance of AIX in general make it a better business use case if one can afford IBM. I cant be bothered to keep my last AIX box because disks cost too much to fit the old hardware. Concur about HPUX LVM usage. It did work but requires deeper system knowledge. So why do Vinum Linux LVM commands closely resemble HPUX ?

Sam for comparing the dumb terminal system menus, SAM and whatever on AIX. AIX better. The XWindows versions were in a similar position.

I disagree about the rotting zombie remark. Vendor idiosyncrasies kept many of us in work. Try Ultrix for a head smashing time. Crays were also a bit interesting, not that I did much on them. HPUX, being a BSD/Sys V hybrid was somewhat nonstandard. Boot configs located in /sbin for instance. But then I have seen 3rd party software place logs in /etc/. {S}. Standards, so many to ignore

[dave 81]

Re: Such mixed feelings

As scummy as HPE are, Oracle losing is far far better.

[Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse]

Promissory estoppel

I am not a lawyer, and in all my years I have never heard of this principle stated in this way. Thanks El Reg - I learn something new every day :-)

I'm now going to try to use it as often as I can, which will probably be not much... mainly due to my not being a lawyer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Promissory estoppel

Promissory estoppel is the legal principle that a promise is enforceable by law

The legal opposite, that a promise is entirely unenforceable by law, is called a de Pfeffel as in Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

[Anonymous Coward]

Could one of the longest and dirtiest cases in tech history finally be over?

No. This is Oracle. They are in the lawsuit business.

[Mike Pellatt]

Re: Could one of the longest and dirtiest cases in tech history finally be over?

But not half as much as Caldera The SCO Group The US Trustee in Bankruptcy Unxis Xinuos

[fredesmite2]

Itanium hardward being manufactued : 0

dead , hardward that hasnt besn produced in years ..

[mevets]

class action?

If this is, and the 3 billion divided amongst all past itanic users, that would be like a 1billion each. I knew I should have got an itanic.

[Denarius]

Re: class action?

why, is your house cold and you have your own nuclear power station ?