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Lawsuit ends between Oracle and Netapp
FIGHTING ON TOO MANY FRONTS might have diminished Oracle's readiness to continue with its three year old lawsuit against data storage company Netapp, which today announced that the litigation had been abandoned.
Starting in 2007, this special laywers' retirement funding effort started off as a patent fight between Sun Microsystems and NetApp. When Oracle bought Sun it continued the senseless litigation.
But now it is ending, it seems it's kiss and make up time. Tom Georgens, Netapp president and CEO said, "For more than a decade, Oracle and NetApp have shared a common vision focused on providing solutions that reduce IT cost and complexity for thousands of customers worldwide," despite apparently being able to take legal action against each other too.
One wonders if Oracle's readiness to work with NetApp and seek to have the lawsuits dismissed without prejudice has anything to do with all the court action the full service IT vendor is now facing.
In June it emerged that Oracle has been sued by a whistleblower and the US Justice Department for overcharging the US government by tens of millions of dollars. Not wanting others to miss out on needing a large legal team Oracle has filed a lawsuit against Google for alleged patent and copyright infringement over Java. And now Oracle is getting a taste of its own medicine as its new president Mark Hurd is getting sued by his former employer. µ
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If Ellison could receive emergency ego-reduction surgery, this could perhaps enable him to make some decisions that would benefit Oracle and its shareholders in the long run. Instead he has done the following:
- Release impulsive, childish statements re: the HP/Hurd issue, alienating the world's largest PC manufacturer (who is acting within their legal rights...Hurd signed that contract). Oracle sells database software that needs to run on SERVERS (and HP sells a lot of servers).
-Suing Google (one of the biggest users and advocates of Java) over Java, alienating Oracle/Java from the entire open source community and demonstrating to the world that using Java is a legal liability.
These seem to be the actions of an egoist who is so full of himself and his power that he is destroying the company that he works for (as just another employee).
So, while he is into dropping these lawsuits...a big slice of humble pie, a secret apologetic letter to HP while delaying Hurd's appointment, open-sourcing Java, apologizing to Google and working with the FSF to reassure the world that Java is still safe to use, THOSE would be decisions that would be in the best interest of Oracle and its shareholders. It is never too late to do the right thing(s). Perhaps Steve Jobs would follow suit.
Failing that, maybe Hurd would make a better CEO for Oracle (after attending the Tiger Woods School for Wayward Boys, of course).
Oracle is killing opensolaris, so likely they are also killing zfs as open source, if not killing it completely. NetApp would not want to lose to Oracle's well funded legal team and lose the ability to sue smaller companies trying to use zfs.
"Why can't we all just...get along?"
(Jack Nicholson - Mars Attacks!)
And we all remember what happened to Jack in that movie. So Ellison is playing the "nice guy" now? He soon could be sporting a Google flag (AAACCCK, AAAACK-AAAACK!).