"HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
Court finds Oracle breached contract, is required to port products to 
Itanium." - Ars Technica
<http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/hp-wins-judgement-in-itanium-suit-against-oracle/> 




-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

On 1-8-2012 23:52, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
> Court finds Oracle breached contract, is required to port products to
> Itanium." - Ars Technica

That's great news, thanks for sharing.  As they say: Keep VMS running!

  - MG

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
> Court finds Oracle breached contract, is required to port products to 
> Itanium." - Ars Technica
> <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/hp-wins-judgement-in-itanium-suit-against-oracle/> 

So now that HP won,  it can announce the EOL plans for IA64 sooner and
not fear losing face.

Wouldn't surprise me if that "project Odyssey" thing magically started
to produce real hardware and software real soon now. But HP will first
unleash the Poulson thing. (remains to be seen if they will bother with
performance tests such as SPEC - they didn't with Tukwila)

Fact is that Oracle still managed to damage HP's reputation and result
in loss of sales/customers. Customer who already embarked onto migration
away from HP won't change course. Nothing in the court ruling says that
Itaniu has a bright life ahead, it merely states that Oracle is bound to
continue to produce for IA64 as long as HP sells new IA64 systems.

And this is interesting because HP could announce EOL of IA64 tomorrow
with last sales in 10 years time, and Oracle would be bound to produce
new versions for 10 years even if nobody buys those boxes anymore.

On Wednesday, August 1, 2012 5:52:37 PM UTC-4, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
> 
> Court finds Oracle breached contract, is required to port products to 
> Itanium." - Ars Technica

Wow.  I am very surprised.  I really thought it would have to swing the
other way.

The enforcement part will be interesting to watch.  Oracle still has
plenty of opportunity to play games.  Hopefully HP is wise enough
to see that.

EJ

johnson.eric@gmail.com wrote:

> Wow.  I am very surprised.  I really thought it would have to swing the
> other way.

I am not surprised.  HP has not yet breached its side of the contract
since IA64 boxes are still being produced and there is at least 2 new
IA64 chips in the pipeline.

Now, had Oracle signed a contract where its obligations ended "when it
becomes obvious that IA64 is being EOLed", then the judge would have had
to really consider the evidence presented by Oracle. But as it stands,
even when HP formally announces the end of the line after Kittson with
last sale 3 years after that, Oracle is still bound by the contract it
signed to produce for IA64 until that last sale.

So Oracle loses out because in the future, it will be bound by that
contract to produce new versions even though nobody buys new IA64
systems. But this will give more time for HP-UX customers to migrate to
another platform and reduce the dramatic loss of customers experienced
by BCS in the last year.


Oracle has already hurt HP's BCS finances and image in a serious way.
And as long as there are no penalties for that, Oracle still comes out
ahead.

On 8/1/2012 8:13 PM, johnson.eric@gmail.com wrote:
> The enforcement part will be interesting to watch.  Oracle still has
> plenty of opportunity to play games.  Hopefully HP is wise enough
> to see that.

Even if HP sees that then what?

Does the contract specify a minimum level of quality or a minimum level
of support?

Having the right to get an EXE that build without errors is
far from enough for most customers using Oracle.

Arne

JF Mezei wrote:
> johnson.eric@gmail.com wrote:
> 
>> Wow.  I am very surprised.  I really thought it would have to swing the
>> other way.
> 
> I am not surprised.  HP has not yet breached its side of the contract
> since IA64 boxes are still being produced and there is at least 2 new
> IA64 chips in the pipeline.
> 
> Now, had Oracle signed a contract where its obligations ended "when it
> becomes obvious that IA64 is being EOLed", then the judge would have had
> to really consider the evidence presented by Oracle. But as it stands,
> even when HP formally announces the end of the line after Kittson with
> last sale 3 years after that, Oracle is still bound by the contract it
> signed to produce for IA64 until that last sale.
> 
> So Oracle loses out because in the future, it will be bound by that
> contract to produce new versions even though nobody buys new IA64
> systems. But this will give more time for HP-UX customers to migrate to
> another platform and reduce the dramatic loss of customers experienced
> by BCS in the last year.
> 
> 
> Oracle has already hurt HP's BCS finances and image in a serious way.
> And as long as there are no penalties for that, Oracle still comes out
> ahead.

</Broken Record>

It is an interesting decision.  If you read the language, it's pretty clear.  Oracle tried 
to obscure the pertainent part of the agreement.  It's refreshing to see a reasonable 
outcome in a court case.  Or, HP's bribe was bigger than Oracle's.

That said, you have to wonder what kind of games Larry will play.  "Bug? Ok, we'll look at 
it, ....", and time passes, and such.  Can production shops put up with problems that stop 
them dead in the water?  Can they wait 3 weeks for Oracle to look at the problem?

Would Larry go so far as to introduce problems ??

In article <jvc8f5$9tf$1@dont-email.me>,
 Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh@hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:

> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
> Court finds Oracle breached contract, is required to port products to 
> Itanium." - Ars Technica
> <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/hp-wins-judgement-in-it
> anium-suit-against-oracle/>

It'll be interesting to see

1) what Oracle will charge
2) how timely any such updates/upgrades/ports will happen
3) what kind of tech support Oracle will offer

Oracle charging two or three times for Itanium products which are 
release years late would not surprise me.  Especially if they performed 
poorly on such systems once released.

-- 
May joy be yours all the days of your life! - Phina
We are but a moment's sunlight, fading in the grass. - The Youngbloods
Those who eat natural foods die of natural causes. - Kperspective

David Froble wrote:

> That said, you have to wonder what kind of games Larry will play.  "Bug? Ok, we'll look at 
> it, ....", and time passes, and such.  Can production shops put up with problems that stop 
> them dead in the water?  Can they wait 3 weeks for Oracle to look at the problem?

I don't think so. I think Oracle will want to keep its own support costs
down and produce software that runs well on HP-UX.  It is Oracle's image
that would be hurt f its software was buggy.  Release schedule may have
HP-U gets its new versions later than usual though, but they will get them.

Oracle has already inflicted the harm it wanted to inflict on HP. And
eventually, HP will announce the EOL for IA64.

At the time HP annouces the EOL for IA64, things will get interssting as
Oracle may seek t have its obligation to continue to produce new
versions voided and reduced to obligation to support existing versions.

Howard S Shubs wrote:

> Oracle charging two or three times for Itanium products which are 
> release years late would not surprise me.  Especially if they performed 
> poorly on such systems once released.

Once HP announces the EOL of IA64, Oracle won't have to resort to such
tactics because it will be pointless, futile and childish. Customers
will have gotten the message that they have to move off HP-UX, VMS and
possibly NSK and Oracle has nothing to gain by introducing bugs.

Remember that HP customers will be forced to migrate. This is a big
project. And in such a big project, there is a risk that IBM might
undercut HP/Oracle and get customers to move to IBM/DB2.

Oracle has to find the right balance between pissing customers off about
HP without pissing them about Oracle.

I believe the court will hold Oracle to the contract:

    'will continue to offer its product suite on HP platforms ... 
     in a manner consistent with that partnership as it existed
     prior to ... hiring of Hurd' 

That is pretty clear.

Now, might Oracle management try to manipulate the issue?  Only time will tell.

Bill.

In article <5019db87$0$1172$c3e8da3$eb767761@news.astraweb.com>,
 JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

> Howard S Shubs wrote:
> 
> > Oracle charging two or three times for Itanium products which are 
> > release years late would not surprise me.  Especially if they performed 
> > poorly on such systems once released.
> 
> Once HP announces the EOL of IA64, Oracle won't have to resort to such
> tactics because it will be pointless, futile and childish. Customers
> will have gotten the message that they have to move off HP-UX, VMS and
> possibly NSK and Oracle has nothing to gain by introducing bugs.

That assumes HP does that soon.  There's no reason to believe they will, 
and there's no reason to believe Oracle will not charge all and more 
than the market will bear, issue updates years late, and not train their 
tech support people properly.

So Ellison would lose some customers, maybe.  In the mean time, he'd 
encourage companies to move to other hardware platforms, regardless of 
this decision.


> Remember that HP customers will be forced to migrate. This is a big
> project. And in such a big project, there is a risk that IBM might
> undercut HP/Oracle and get customers to move to IBM/DB2.

P'raps.  Or p'raps they'll have porting assistance to Linux from Oracle 
for much less.


> Oracle has to find the right balance between pissing customers off about
> HP without pissing them about Oracle.

I'm sure Oracle will manage something.

-- 
May joy be yours all the days of your life! - Phina
We are but a moment's sunlight, fading in the grass. - The Youngbloods
Those who eat natural foods die of natural causes. - Kperspective

Howard S Shubs wrote:

> That assumes HP does that soon.  There's no reason to believe they will, 

One of the Oracle documents that was "obtained" from HP showed HP
expected customers to learn about the EOL of Itanium in 2012.

With BCS bleeding customers at a high rate, and sales of IA64 systems
tanking, the sooner the EOL is announced, the sooner the financial
burden can stop.

Here is how I see it unfold:

Poulson released, HP announces Poulson based systems
HP (finally) unveils some real hardware and software for its project
odyssey.

HP announces that the speed curve for x86 is such that it will (or has)
surpassed IA64 based systems and that IA64 systems will be EOLed, with
Kittson and a speedbump coming a year later, and garantees sales of IA64
for only 5 years. (and thus support for 10 years, but since HP doesn't
lose money on support, this is less important).

The second HP fesses up that IA64 is a lame duck waiting to be EOLed,
Oracle no longer needs to lift a finger to hurt HP. So it would have no
reason to purposefully delay HP-UX releases. But it will also have fewer
reasons to add resourxes to get those versions out very fast.

Was was quite smart about this Oracle thing is that it lasted long
enough for many customers to put into place porting projects to leave
HP-UX. Those projects will not stop with the result of thos lawsuit
saying Oracle must continue to provide new versions.

What Oracle did was only part of the overall scene which caused
customers to decide to migrate away from IA64 based systems. They
already knew that IA64 had finite lifetime and migration was going to
have to be done eventually anyways. Oracle acted more as a catalyst to
force those decision to be taken sooner rather than later.

Howard S Shubs schrieb:

> 
> I'm sure Oracle will manage something.
> 

They could appeal, for example.

Another article on the same news item:

http://www.zdnet.com/hp-wins-over-oracle-in-itanium-legal-battle-7000001992/

Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/
 

On Thursday, August 2, 2012 5:50:14 AM UTC-4, Neil Rieck wrote:
> Another article on the same news item:
> 
> http://www.zdnet.com/hp-wins-over-oracle-in-itanium-legal-battle-7000001992/
> 
> Neil Rieck
> Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
> Ontario, Canada.
> http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/
>

Now we have all seen this "Tortoise and the Hare" situation before with whomever was in control of VMS: They have won the court case so there is no need to put any more effort into marketing the product, "Just sit back and let the money roll in".

If HP was smart, they would now use this recent event to launch a new marketing campaign. I still run into numerous IT professionals in Canada who think:

1) VMS died with VAX
    or
2) Never heard about Alpha or OpenVMS
    or
4) Knew about Alpha but have never heard of Itanium

If IT people don't know about Itanium, or think VMS is dead, then there is very little chance of HP selling these products.

Just my 2-cents worth :-)

Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/OpenVMS.html
 

On Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:38:32 -0400, JF Mezei wrote:

> But HP will first unleash the Poulson thing. (remains to be seen if they
> will bother with performance tests such as SPEC - they didn't with
> Tukwila)

Somewhere in the mountains of articles on the subject was that the last 
SPEC benchmark that HP ran needed Oracle's signature, and that was not 
forthcoming.
 
> Fact is that Oracle still managed to damage HP's reputation and result
> in loss of sales/customers. Customer who already embarked onto migration
> away from HP won't change course.

I have already come across suggestions that the next courtroom battle 
might be over compensation for that damage.

-- 
Paul Sture

Paul Sture schrieb:
> 
> Somewhere in the mountains of articles on the subject was that the last 
> SPEC benchmark that HP ran needed Oracle's signature, and that was not 
> forthcoming.

What has Oracle to do with SPEC?
These are vendor independent benchmarks, last time I checked.

> 
> I have already come across suggestions that the next courtroom battle 
> might be over compensation for that damage.
> 

I think it is more likely that the next battle will be over Oracle
not accepting the judge's current ruling. And rightfully so.
While it is understandable that Oracle is obliged to maintain
current products, I find it weird to try to "force" them
to offer also future DB versions for a platform which is no longer
viable.

On Thu, 02 Aug 2012 12:34:28 +0200, Michael Kraemer wrote:

> Paul Sture schrieb:
>> 
>> Somewhere in the mountains of articles on the subject was that the last
>> SPEC benchmark that HP ran needed Oracle's signature, and that was not
>> forthcoming.
> 
> What has Oracle to do with SPEC?
> These are vendor independent benchmarks, last time I checked.

Sorry it was TPC.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/11/
oracle_allegedly_stifles_hp_oracle_tpc_benchmark/

'Sources tell us this result has not been made "official" by the TPC-C 
because Oracle allegedly refuses to sign it off for submission to the 
benchmarking body.'

> 
>> I have already come across suggestions that the next courtroom battle
>> might be over compensation for that damage.
>> 
>> 
> I think it is more likely that the next battle will be over Oracle not
> accepting the judge's current ruling. And rightfully so. While it is
> understandable that Oracle is obliged to maintain current products, I
> find it weird to try to "force" them to offer also future DB versions
> for a platform which is no longer viable.

Yes, an appeal is likely.

-- 
Paul Sture

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>
> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
> Court finds Oracle breached contract, is required to port products to
> Itanium." - Ars Technica
> <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/hp-wins-judgement-in-itanium-suit-against-oracle/>
>
>
>
>
I suppose that for OpenVMS this means that the new versions of RdB (and 
DBMS?) will be released for Itanium?

Dirk Munk wrote 2012-08-02 13:13:
> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>
>> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
>> Court finds Oracle breached contract, is required to port products to
>> Itanium." - Ars Technica
>> <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/hp-wins-judgement-in-itanium-suit-against-oracle/>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> I suppose that for OpenVMS this means that the new versions of RdB (and
> DBMS?) will be released for Itanium?

Depending in what "the new versions" is, Rdb 7.3 was/is already on the
"last version" list for Itanium. So this should change anything in the
short run for Rdb with regard to the release of 7.3.

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.html

And the message from Oracle (before todays news) was that they
planned to continue development while staying on 7.3.x.x. numbers.

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> Dirk Munk wrote 2012-08-02 13:13:
>> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>>
>>> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
>>> Court finds Oracle breached contract, is required to port products to
>>> Itanium." - Ars Technica
>>> <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/hp-wins-judgement-in-itanium-suit-against-oracle/>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> I suppose that for OpenVMS this means that the new versions of RdB (and
>> DBMS?) will be released for Itanium?
>
> Depending in what "the new versions" is, Rdb 7.3 was/is already on the
> "last version" list for Itanium. So this should change anything in the
> short run for Rdb with regard to the release of 7.3.
>
> http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.html
>
> And the message from Oracle (before todays news) was that they
> planned to continue development while staying on 7.3.x.x. numbers.

There was a roadmap in Powerpoint that suggested  a new version of RdB. 
It was discussed in this group.

Dirk Munk wrote 2012-08-02 14:05:
> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>> Dirk Munk wrote 2012-08-02 13:13:
>>> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>>>
>>>> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
>>>> Court finds Oracle breached contract, is required to port products to
>>>> Itanium." - Ars Technica
>>>> <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/hp-wins-judgement-in-itanium-suit-against-oracle/>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I suppose that for OpenVMS this means that the new versions of RdB (and
>>> DBMS?) will be released for Itanium?
>>
>> Depending in what "the new versions" is, Rdb 7.3 was/is already on the
>> "last version" list for Itanium. So this should change anything in the
>> short run for Rdb with regard to the release of 7.3.
>>
>> http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.html
>>
>> And the message from Oracle (before todays news) was that they
>> planned to continue development while staying on 7.3.x.x. numbers.
>
> There was a roadmap in Powerpoint that suggested  a new version of RdB. It
> was discussed in this group.

Yes, that should probably be 7.3. Not affected by the current news.

On 8/2/2012 12:45 AM, JF Mezei wrote:
> One of the Oracle documents that was "obtained" from HP showed HP
> expected customers to learn about the EOL of Itanium in 2012.

That was if Intel followed through with their threats way back in 2007 
to end Itanium development. The contract that HP and Intel signed in 
2007 eliminated that problem.

> The second HP fesses up that IA64 is a lame duck waiting to be EOLed,

According to testimony by Kirk Skaugen of Intel, Intel has a contract 
with HP to continue Itanium development through 2022, and HP has the 
option to renew it beyond that time 
(http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2170327/hp-force-intel-develop-itanium-2022) 
So Itanium's documented future extends farther out than Oracle's roadmap 
for SPARC, or IBM's roadmap for POWER.

On 8/1/2012 3:52 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle

HP's letter to customers: 
http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/us/en/systems/customer-oracle.html

HP's press release: 
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=1275872

The first phase of the trial was before a judge and was to determine if 
there was a contract in place. The judge says there was, and that Oracle 
must reverse its decision and continue to port to Itanium. You can read 
the proposed ruling at 
http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/us/en/systems/customer-oracle.html

Oracle has 15 days to ask for changes in the judgment, but given the 
content of the preliminary judgment it appears essentially impossible at 
this point that the final judgment could be in favor of Oracle.

Then the next phase would be a jury trial to determine damages.

On 08/02/12 10:34, Michael Kraemer wrote:

>
> I think it is more likely that the next battle will be over Oracle
> not accepting the judge's current ruling. And rightfully so.
> While it is understandable that Oracle is obliged to maintain
> current products, I find it weird to try to "force" them
> to offer also future DB versions for a platform which is no longer
> viable.
>

Sounds a bit iffy to me as well, in that if Oracle had information that
Itanium was to be canned, they might assume that they would get little
or no return on the investment needed to keep the product updated and
competitive. Love em or hate em, there could be a sound business case for
there decision, irrespective of any other machiavellian elements :-)...

Regards,

Chris

Neil Rieck wrote:
> Another article on the same news item:
> 
> http://www.zdnet.com/hp-wins-over-oracle-in-itanium-legal-battle-7000001992/

I am somewhat surprised (but only somewhat) that Oracle would appeal.

The above article does have the "can't decide on its own" wording which
implies that if HP agrees, then Oracle can stop development for IA64.

Surely Oracle knew the exact wording of the contract it signed before
announcing the end of development for IA64. It would have known that the
contract binds it until end of sales, not the rumour of EOL of IA64.

I know that there are legal requirements for support for at least 5
years after end of sales or something akin to this.  Are there
requirements to announce end of sales X years before it happens ?

If Oracle does appeal, it will just force HP to delay making formal
announcement of EOL. Whether that forces a push back of end of sales or
not remains to be seen.

If the contract is truly binding until end of sales, HP might get back
at Oracle by keeping one IA64 model in the order books for 10 years and
forcing Oracle to continue to release its products for HP-UX for 10 years.

In 2010, it was already blatantly obvious that IA64 didn't have a bright
future and that the 8086 is where the server action is at.  Was Oracle
so dumb as to sign a contract until "end of sales" without a "or EOL
announcement of the Itanium platform" ?

Michael Kraemer wrote:

> current products, I find it weird to try to "force" them
> to offer also future DB versions for a platform which is no longer
> viable.

IF Oracle really did sign a contract that had it commit to continue
development for IA64 until end of sales, then that contract is binding.


My question is whether Oracle was really so dumb as to sign this or
whether this interpretation was made by the judge based on other
contracts such as the ugliness when Hurd got hired by Oracle.

On 2012-08-02, Keith Parris <keithparris_deletethis@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On 8/2/2012 12:45 AM, JF Mezei wrote:
>> The second HP fesses up that IA64 is a lame duck waiting to be EOLed,
>
> According to testimony by Kirk Skaugen of Intel, Intel has a contract 
> with HP to continue Itanium development through 2022, and HP has the 
> option to renew it beyond that time 
> (http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2170327/hp-force-intel-develop-itanium-2022) 
> So Itanium's documented future extends farther out than Oracle's roadmap 
> for SPARC, or IBM's roadmap for POWER.

And when Alpha was released, it came complete with a 25 year development
plan.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

In article <c3cd0$501a60f5$5ed43c14$4772@cache1.tilbu1.nb.home.nl>, Dirk
Munk <munk@home.nl> writes: 

> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> >
> > "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
> > Court finds Oracle breached contract, is required to port products to
> > Itanium." - Ars Technica
> > <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/hp-wins-judgement-in-itanium-suit-against-oracle/>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> I suppose that for OpenVMS this means that the new versions of RdB (and 
> DBMS?) will be released for Itanium?

How can we tell if anything has changed?  Even before all of this, 
Oracle rebadged 8.0 to 7.2 since no-one wanted a .0 release.  After the 
Hurd controversy, Rdb said "OK, no new version, but there will be 
7.3.a.b.c.d.e.f.g.h.i for as long as there is demand".

Keith Parris wrote:

> According to testimony by Kirk Skaugen of Intel, Intel has a contract 
> with HP to continue Itanium development through 2022, and HP has the 
> option to renew it beyond that time 

The wording in the article states that Intel is to make IA64 available
to HP until that date. It says nothing about continued development until
2022.

Basically, Intel is to make one last big run of IA64 chips and keep them
in some old wharehouse in case HP needs some.

Unless the actual contract between HP and Oracle is made public, we
can't read the real text, check for dots on every i etc.

Oracle wouldn't have signed such a contract binding it until end of
sales unless there was enough money behind to warrant this.  You don't
sign such a contract for a viable platform (since such contract is not
needed), and you don't sign "until end of sales" for a platform with a
dubious future.

Oracle wouldn't have signed a contract that essentially forces it to
develop full suite of apps and DB engines for HP-UX even when the HP-UX
intsalled base will have dwindled to 7 customers with 1 IA64 system sale
per year.

Maybe HP had videotape of Larry doing LaCarly in a hotel room, and they
forced Oracle into that contract. :-)

In article <501ab3f0$0$44395$c3e8da3$f017e9df@news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei
<jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> writes:
> 
> IF Oracle really did sign a contract that had it commit to continue
> development for IA64 until end of sales, then that contract is binding.
> 
 
What I hear (read) is that this isn't so clear at all,
otherwise it wouldn't have ended up in court.
Seems it was more of a verbal agreement, based on the
assumption that everything is fine on board the Itanic.

> 
> My question is whether Oracle was really so dumb as to sign this or
> whether this interpretation was made by the judge based on other
> contracts such as the ugliness when Hurd got hired by Oracle.

In article <501ab6b7$0$44359$c3e8da3$f017e9df@news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei
<jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> writes:
> 
> Maybe HP had videotape of Larry doing LaCarly in a hotel room, and they
> forced Oracle into that contract. :-)
> 

I'm not so sure who would be the victim in this case ... 

In article <jvec7n$mt$2@dont-email.me>, Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
> 
> And when Alpha was released, it came complete with a 25 year development
> plan.

   A plan is not a contract.  DEC claimed that they'd had 10-15 years
   success with PDP-11 and VAX, and _wanted_ 25 years with Alpha.

On 8/2/2012 4:34 AM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> I think it is more likely that the next battle will be over Oracle
> not accepting the judge's current ruling.

Oracle (and HP) have 15 days to comment on the preliminary judgment. 
Then a final judgment will be released.

> And rightfully so.
> While it is understandable that Oracle is obliged to maintain
> current products, I find it weird to try to "force" them
> to offer also future DB versions for a platform which is no longer
> viable.

Intel and HP certainly feel the platform is viable. Intel has an 
agreement with HP to develop Itanium until 2022, and HP has the option 
to renew at that point. Poulson appears to have the potential for 
providing a significant performance increase. And with the Kittson (and 
as court documents leaked, Kittson+) generations ahead, it sure looks 
viable from here.

Oracle continued development for PA-RISC and Alpha even _after_ the 
end-of-life announcements for those chips. It didn't pre-emptively cut 
development beforehand.

In the Mark Hurd settlement, Oracle and HP agreed in writing: "Oracle 
will continue to offer its product suite on HP platforms, and HP will 
continue to support Oracle products (including Oracle Enterprise Linux 
and Oracle VM) on its hardware in a manner consistent with that 
partnership as it existed prior to Oracle's hiring of Hurd."

Oracle supported its products on Itanium before it hired Hurd. So 
nothing is weird -- all the court is forcing Oracle to do is what they 
agreed in writing to do.

Keith Parris schrieb:

> According to testimony by Kirk Skaugen of Intel, Intel has a contract 
> with HP to continue Itanium development through 2022, and HP has the 
> option to renew it beyond that time 
> (http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2170327/hp-force-intel-develop-itanium-2022) 
> So Itanium's documented future 

LOL. How often have HP/intel broken their roadmap promises?

> extends farther out than Oracle's roadmap 
> for SPARC, or IBM's roadmap for POWER.

SPARC and Power are made by reputable vendors,
and reputable vendors don't predict development
for more than one and a half generation down the road.
Anything beyond that is pure speculation.

Keith Parris schrieb:
> 
> Oracle (and HP) have 15 days to comment on the preliminary judgment. 
> Then a final judgment will be released.

I'm not a legal expert, but any half decent legal system
allows for a second round. Nothing is "final" until then.
Even if HP "wins" in the end, it will be a pyrrhic victory.

> Oracle continued development for PA-RISC and Alpha even _after_ the 
> end-of-life announcements for those chips. It didn't pre-emptively cut 
> development beforehand.

Apparently a dead Alpha is more viable than a living Itanic.

In article <501a2218$0$57683$c3e8da3$c8b7d2e6@news.astraweb.com>,
 JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

> What Oracle did was only part of the overall scene which caused
> customers to decide to migrate away from IA64 based systems. They
> already knew that IA64 had finite lifetime and migration was going to
> have to be done eventually anyways. Oracle acted more as a catalyst to
> force those decision to be taken sooner rather than later.

I can't argue with this.

-- 
May joy be yours all the days of your life! - Phina
We are but a moment's sunlight, fading in the grass. - The Youngbloods
Those who eat natural foods die of natural causes. - Kperspective

On 8/2/2012 10:43 AM, ChrisQ wrote:
> Sounds a bit iffy to me as well, in that if Oracle had information that
> Itanium was to be canned, they might assume that they would get little
> or no return on the investment needed to keep the product updated and
> competitive.

All the information in the trial documents points to a situation way 
back in 2007 where the continuation of Itanium development appeared to 
be at risk for a time, but then the contract between HP and Intel signed 
in 2007 solved that problem. At this point, as Kirk Skaugen of Intel 
testified, Intel is contracted to continue Itanium development until at 
least 2022, and HP has the option to renew at that point. So Oracle 
can't reasonably claim Itanium was at risk at any time after the 2007 
contract was signed. And when you asked about it, Intel concurred with HP.

In article <jvemg8$h5n$1@solani.org>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer@gsi.de>
writes: 

> I'm not a legal expert, but any half decent legal system
> allows for a second round. 

There is a statement on the Oracle website saying that they will appeal.

> Nothing is "final" until then.
> Even if HP "wins" in the end, it will be a pyrrhic victory.

Right---sort of like winning a court case for unfair dismissal or 
something.  If monetary compensation is awarded, then fine, but if one 
wins the right to work for the boss who unfairly fired one in the first 
place, is that something one really wants, even if one can have it?

On 8/2/2012 11:19 AM, JF Mezei wrote:
> Unless the actual contract between HP and Oracle is made public, we
> can't read the real text, check for dots on every i etc.

Every relevant piece of the contract wording has been made public in the 
court documents, and reiterated again in the preliminary judgment. See 
http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/us/en/systems/customer-oracle.html 
for all the gory details.

The critical piece of the Mark Hurd agreement between Oracle and HP was 
Paragraph 1:

"_Reaffirmation of the Oracle-HP Partnership._ Oracle and HP reaffirm 
their commitment to their longstanding strategic relationship and their 
mutual desire to support their mutual customers. Oracle will continue to 
offer its product suite on HP platforms, and HP will continue to support 
Oracle products (including Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM) on its 
hardware in a manner consistent with that partnership as it existed 
prior to Oracle's hiring of Hurd."

> Oracle wouldn't have signed such a contract binding it until end of
> sales unless there was enough money behind to warrant this.

Right. Oracle expected to make plenty of money selling Oracle software 
on HP hardware, and to benefit from HP's support for its products on HP 
hardware.

> You don't sign such a contract for a viable platform (since
 > such contract is not needed),

Sure you do, when the circumstances warrant it. This agreement was 
basically to continue to do business as usual despite the Mark Hurd 
situation, and Oracle's purchase of Sun. In the wording of Paragraph 1 
we can sense that Oracle may have been concerned about support for OEL 
by HP in light of competition with Red Hat, and for Oracle VM in light 
of HP VM. HP seems to have been concerned that Oracle software would 
continue to be supported on HP hardware in light of the Sun acquisition. 
And this agreement brought the lawsuit about Mark Hurd to an end. It had 
benefits for both parties.

 > and you don't sign "until end of sales" for a platform with a
 > dubious future.

They signed they would continue business "in a manner consistent with 
that partnership as it existed prior...". That had historically meant to 
continue porting and support even for a short period _after_ a chip 
reached end of life, because customers needed and would continue to pay 
for that porting effort and support, because they would continue to use 
the products for a while. And Itanium had certainly not reached end of life.

And its future wasn't dubious (after 2007), according to information 
from both HP and Intel, and confirmed in the court documents, including 
HP-internal e-mails, and testimony from Intel. At this point, it's clear 
it only became dubious in Oracle's wishful thinking, after they acquired 
the Sun hardware business, which top Oracle sales executive Keith Block 
described as "the dog ... it's dead dead dead" and a "pig with lipstick 
.... at best" in http://www.scribd.com/doc/93811611/HP-Itanium-docs-pdf

On 8/2/2012 11:08 AM, JF Mezei wrote:
> IF Oracle really did sign a contract that had it commit to continue
> development for IA64 until end of sales, then that contract is binding.

That's exactly what the judge concluded.

> My question is whether Oracle was really so dumb as to sign this or
> whether this interpretation was made by the judge based on other
> contracts such as the ugliness when Hurd got hired by Oracle.

This IS the contract signed by Oracle and HP in connection with the Hurd 
ugliness.

On 8/2/2012 11:22 AM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> What I hear (read) is that this isn't so clear at all,
> otherwise it wouldn't have ended up in court.

Can't argue with that. Court testimony indicates HP tried to get Oracle 
to agree to more-specific language, but Oracle refused. But the final 
language ended up specific-enough for the judge.

> Seems it was more of a verbal agreement, based on the
> assumption that everything is fine on board the Itanic.

Nope. Written contract.

On 8/1/2012 6:49 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
> Oracle has already hurt HP's BCS finances and image in a serious way.
> And as long as there are no penalties for that, Oracle still comes out
> ahead.

Which is why the next phase of the trial will be a jury trial assessing 
damages.

On 8/1/2012 7:02 PM, Arne Vajh�j wrote:
> Does the contract specify a minimum level of quality or a minimum level
> of support?

Yes.

"The Court ordered and declared as follows:

In this action for declaratory relief, the Court finds in favor of HP 
and against Oracle on both the breach of contract and promissory 
estoppel causes of action brought by HP.

The Settlement and Release Agreement entered into by HP, Oracle and Hurd 
on September 20, 2010, requires Oracle to continue to offer its product 
suite on HP�s Itanium-based server platforms and does not confer on 
Oracle the discretion to decide whether to do so or not.

The terms �product suite� means Oracle software products that were 
offered on HP�s Itanium-based servers at the time Oracle signed the 
September 20, 2010 Settlement and Release Agreement, including any new 
releases, versions or updates of those products.

Oracle�s obligation to continue to offer its products on HP�s 
Itanium-based server platforms lasts until such time as HP discontinues 
the sales of its Itanium-based servers.

Oracle is required to port its products to HP�s Itanium-based servers 
without charge to HP.�

http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/us/en/systems/customer-oracle.html

On 8/2/2012 5:13 AM, Dirk Munk wrote:
> I suppose that for OpenVMS this means that the new versions of RdB (and
> DBMS?) will be released for Itanium?

Yes, it appears that if Oracle abides by the judgment new versions of 
Oracle Rdb and Oracle Server would be produced and supported on OpenVMS 
for Itanium.

In other words, back to business as usual.

On 8/2/2012 6:33 AM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> Dirk Munk wrote 2012-08-02 14:05:
>> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>> There was a roadmap in Powerpoint that suggested  a new version of
>> RdB. It was discussed in this group.
>
> Yes, that should probably be 7.3. Not affected by the current news.

It would be an Rdb version 7.4, 7.5, 8.0, etc. which would be again 
allowed to go out, given the current news.

On 8/2/2012 11:13 AM, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
> How can we tell if anything has changed?  Even before all of this,
> Oracle rebadged 8.0 to 7.2 since no-one wanted a .0 release.  After the
> Hurd controversy, Rdb said "OK, no new version, but there will be
> 7.3.a.b.c.d.e.f.g.h.i for as long as there is demand".

But regardless of how many sub-versions were produced, flying under the 
radar with major new features disguised as bug fixes, technically 
Oracle's Lifetime Support Policy 
(http://www.oracle.com/us/support/lifetime-support/index.html) says 
active development for a version will only occur for 5 years (Premier 
Support) plus 3 years (Extended Support) after its release, so that 
would have ended Rdb Engineering work in about 2019, 8 years after its 
2011 release of the last version.

The judgment, if followed, would allow release of subsequent versions, 
resetting the 8-year Engineering clock with each release.

Keith Parris wrote 2012-08-03 00:17:
> On 8/2/2012 6:33 AM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>> Dirk Munk wrote 2012-08-02 14:05:
>>> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>>> There was a roadmap in Powerpoint that suggested  a new version of
>>> RdB. It was discussed in this group.
>>
>> Yes, that should probably be 7.3. Not affected by the current news.
>
> It would be an Rdb version 7.4, 7.5, 8.0, etc. which would be again allowed
> to go out, given the current news.

If there was talk about *a* new version, it was 7.3, and that was
not affected by todays/yesterdays news.

Any version(s) after 7.3 are, of course.

But the next/new Rdb release (7.3) was/is already in Oracles
"last release" document.

Michael Kraemer wrote:
> Paul Sture schrieb:
>>
>> Somewhere in the mountains of articles on the subject was that the 
>> last SPEC benchmark that HP ran needed Oracle's signature, and that 
>> was not forthcoming.
> 
> What has Oracle to do with SPEC?
> These are vendor independent benchmarks, last time I checked.
> 
>>
>> I have already come across suggestions that the next courtroom battle 
>> might be over compensation for that damage.
>>
> 
> I think it is more likely that the next battle will be over Oracle
> not accepting the judge's current ruling. And rightfully so.
> While it is understandable that Oracle is obliged to maintain
> current products, I find it weird to try to "force" them
> to offer also future DB versions for a platform which is no longer
> viable.
> 

You seem to forget why there was an agreement for Oracle to violate.  The Hurd guy, 
remember him?  As part of Oracle hiring him, they had to agree to certain things, to avoid 
harm to HP.

So it isn't "business as usual".  Oracle agreed to some things in order to hire Hurd. 
They they broke the agreement.  Otherwise HP would not have won.

Because of that, I see little for Oracle to appeal, unless it's another chance to offer a 
larger bribe than HP.

JF Mezei wrote:
> Howard S Shubs wrote:
> 
>> That assumes HP does that soon.  There's no reason to believe they will, 
> 
> One of the Oracle documents that was "obtained" from HP showed HP
> expected customers to learn about the EOL of Itanium in 2012.
> 
> With BCS bleeding customers at a high rate, and sales of IA64 systems
> tanking, the sooner the EOL is announced, the sooner the financial
> burden can stop.
> 
> Here is how I see it unfold:
> 
> Poulson released, HP announces Poulson based systems
> HP (finally) unveils some real hardware and software for its project
> odyssey.
> 
> HP announces that the speed curve for x86 is such that it will (or has)
> surpassed IA64 based systems and that IA64 systems will be EOLed, with
> Kittson and a speedbump coming a year later, and garantees sales of IA64
> for only 5 years. (and thus support for 10 years, but since HP doesn't
> lose money on support, this is less important).
> 
> The second HP fesses up that IA64 is a lame duck waiting to be EOLed,
> Oracle no longer needs to lift a finger to hurt HP. So it would have no
> reason to purposefully delay HP-UX releases. But it will also have fewer
> reasons to add resourxes to get those versions out very fast.
> 
> Was was quite smart about this Oracle thing is that it lasted long
> enough for many customers to put into place porting projects to leave
> HP-UX. Those projects will not stop with the result of thos lawsuit
> saying Oracle must continue to provide new versions.

You state this as fact.  Can you name one place that began a port off HP-UX solely because 
of the little spat between HP and Oracle?  just one, that's all that I'm asking.  No 
conjecture, real facts.

> What Oracle did was only part of the overall scene which caused
> customers to decide to migrate away from IA64 based systems. They
> already knew that IA64 had finite lifetime and migration was going to
> have to be done eventually anyways. Oracle acted more as a catalyst to
> force those decision to be taken sooner rather than later.

As I've asked above, please name even one ....

I've had more FUD than I can put up with ....

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> Keith Parris wrote 2012-08-03 00:17:
>> On 8/2/2012 6:33 AM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>>> Dirk Munk wrote 2012-08-02 14:05:
>>>> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>>>> There was a roadmap in Powerpoint that suggested  a new version of
>>>> RdB. It was discussed in this group.
>>>
>>> Yes, that should probably be 7.3. Not affected by the current news.
>>
>> It would be an Rdb version 7.4, 7.5, 8.0, etc. which would be again 
>> allowed
>> to go out, given the current news.
> 
> If there was talk about *a* new version, it was 7.3, and that was
> not affected by todays/yesterdays news.
> 
> Any version(s) after 7.3 are, of course.
> 
> But the next/new Rdb release (7.3) was/is already in Oracles
> "last release" document.

I guess it is a timing thing.  Was the "last release" thing before or after the 2007 
contract?  If after, then according to the court decision, Oracle would be obligated to 
continue to develop and sell RDB.

But I don't think it was RDB and / or VMS that caused HP to file the suit ....

Keith Parris wrote:
> On 8/1/2012 3:52 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
> 
> HP's letter to customers: 
> http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/us/en/systems/customer-oracle.html
> 
> HP's press release: 
> http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=1275872
> 
> The first phase of the trial was before a judge and was to determine if 
> there was a contract in place. The judge says there was, and that Oracle 
> must reverse its decision and continue to port to Itanium. You can read 
> the proposed ruling at 
> http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/us/en/systems/customer-oracle.html
> 
> Oracle has 15 days to ask for changes in the judgment, but given the 
> content of the preliminary judgment it appears essentially impossible at 
> this point that the final judgment could be in favor of Oracle.

Unless of course, the 15 days is for the bribes to flow in ....

Ever seen a poor judge ?

> Then the next phase would be a jury trial to determine damages.

Mr Paris,

I realise you are  the messenger from HP. So I do not intend to shoot
the messenger here.

The wording put out never mentioned that IA64 is to be developped until
2022. It mentions that Intel is to make available chips until 2022. In
other words, Intel will keep surplus IA64 chips until 2022.  This means
available spares for support beyond end of sale. It doesn't mean
continued development until 2022.

Depending on the size of the Kittson production run, HP could also keep
one or two Kittson based IA64 models on the price list for quite some
time to help customers who need togrow capacity and can't yet migrate to
the 8086.

(Note that HP did something similar with Alphas, with some "special"
customers able to buy Alphas after the end of sales deadline).

It should be noted that with BCS sales have been free falling since last
year, so one cannot foresee a significant increase in demand for IA64
based systems. HP will likely have to expand "we will cater to the
existing customer base" message from VMS to HP-UX as well.


Customers have already accepted that Kittson and kittson+ are the end of
the line for IA64. Customers know that sales of IA64 systems will
continue for at east 2-3 years beyond first sale of a Kittson+ system.
And they know that support will continue for many many years after that.

However, it is not clear how much software support and upgrades will be
done to the IA64 operating systems. Once the last VMS patch is out to
support the alst Kittson+ based model, will VMS patches continue to be
produced ?  Will TCPIP Services continue to have new releases to support
whatever protocol tweaks are made on the internet ?

This is where HP's denial of the obvious hurts its own image and its own
credibility. The VMS development team has already been decimated in
preparation for the EOL, the roadmap has been shrunken to just a couple
of . releases to support Poulson and Kittson.

People understand that IA64 failed to garner market traction to become
mainstream and failed to live up to performance expectations. This isn't
where HP gets hurt, it is in how HP handles this that HP shoots itself
in the foot.

People see that HP has put it on life support to extend its lifetime.
But HP should be using this extended artificial life support to help
customer migrate instead of pretending that the Itanic isn't sinking.


What differentiates enterprise companies such as IBM from commodity ones
like Dell, ASUS and others is trust and communications. By basically
lying to customers about the real plans for IA64, HP is destroying its
enterprise vendor image and becoming an untrustable commodity maker who
will lie to customers to delay them buying replacement systems,

And considering the boardroom dramas that have happened at HP, including
the spying episodes, HP should be working to regain trust of customers
intead of continuing to lie to them.

It isn't the EOL of IA64 that is hurting HP. It is how HP is denying it
that is hurting it.


It is pretty simple for HP to justify the EOL. It merely has to look at
cost performance of IA64 versus the 8086 and say that 8086 is faster and
cheaper and now supports enterprise features. (cue project Odyssey).

Where it is a bit harder is HP explaining that none of the IA64
operating systems are going to make it to the 8086, and then provide
good information on porting plans, porting help, porting tools and what
extra middleware HP will provide on Linux to make it "enterprise worthy".

The time to do this is now. This way customers can start to plan
migrations while still comfortable with 2 more system upgrades possible.

David Froble wrote:

> You seem to forget why there was an agreement for Oracle to violate.  The Hurd guy, 
> remember him?  As part of Oracle hiring him, they had to agree to certain things, to avoid 
> harm to HP.


From what I read, the Hurd issue simply confirmed that a previous
contract was not ended. So the fine print and dots on the i would be in
the original contract, not in the Hurd agreement.

The fact that the Hurd agreement has to re-afform that contract likely
means that when HP sued Oracle about Hurd, Oracle probably threathened
to cancel that original contract. The Hurd settlement confirmed that
Oracle would not pull out of the original contract.

Now, when the time comes for damages, Oracle can likely argue that its
release of the information about the HP-Intel agreements to postpone the
death of Itanium until after Kittson did not hurt HP since HP itself had
thought that customers would find out about the EOL of Itanium by 2012.

If the drop in BCS sales was inevitable, then Oracle shouldn't be held
responsible for it.

David Froble wrote:

> You state this as fact.  Can you name one place that began a port off HP-UX solely because 
> of the little spat between HP and Oracle?  just one, that's all that I'm asking.  No 
> conjecture, real facts.

I can't name one, mostly because I am not really in that industry
anymore since there is no VMS employment left. However, following HP, I
can tell you that BCS sales are down 34% year over year if I remember
correctly. HP blames the Oracle uglieness for this. Meg Whitman stated
in an early conference call that there was nothing that could be done to
stop the drop in BCS sales and that HP was pinning its hopes on
rebuilding BCS with Project Odyssey.

Combine this with the consistent messages from HP over the years "no, we
won't port HP-UX/VMS/NSK beyond IA64" and "we'll support the VMS
installed base" (instead of we'll continue to develop VMS and grow its
installed base) and you get a very good picture that HP has been
planning this for quite some time.

The Oracle bit simply precipitated things.

In article <jveuaf$fo$2@usenet01.boi.hp.com>, Keith Parris
<keithparris_deletethis@yahoo.com> writes: 

> On 8/2/2012 6:33 AM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> > Dirk Munk wrote 2012-08-02 14:05:
> >> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> >> There was a roadmap in Powerpoint that suggested  a new version of
> >> RdB. It was discussed in this group.
> >
> > Yes, that should probably be 7.3. Not affected by the current news.
> 
> It would be an Rdb version 7.4, 7.5, 8.0, etc. which would be again 
> allowed to go out, given the current news.

OK, but as long as nothing changes but the version number, what does it 
matter?

Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote 2012-08-03 07:57:
> In article <jveuaf$fo$2@usenet01.boi.hp.com>, Keith Parris
> <keithparris_deletethis@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> On 8/2/2012 6:33 AM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>>> Dirk Munk wrote 2012-08-02 14:05:
>>>> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>>>> There was a roadmap in Powerpoint that suggested  a new version of
>>>> RdB. It was discussed in this group.
>>>
>>> Yes, that should probably be 7.3. Not affected by the current news.
>>
>> It would be an Rdb version 7.4, 7.5, 8.0, etc. which would be again
>> allowed to go out, given the current news.
>
> OK, but as long as nothing changes but the version number, what does it
> matter?
>

That is the point. Rdb management at the last Rdb tech days said
(more or less) that they was uneffected (appart from the release
number "thing") by the Oracle-stops-all-IA-64 development message.
So it was business-as-usual even before the judgment yesterday.

Someone (probably JF) also mentioned something about the support
ending date beeing froozen at the release day of 7.3. I have a
clear memory from Rdb management saying that they had an "OK" in
rolling this dates forward without having new 7.4, 7.5... releases.

Now, this is *Rdb* and other Oracle software was probably hit
harder, in particular Oracle DBMS on HP-UX.

Note also that another software that was ment to be developed
"as before" was the *client* kits for Oracle DMBS for IA64/VMS.
So your Oracle DBMS apps on VMS could still use newer DMBS
versions but the DMBS itself had to be run elseware.

And, all this is also developed and released for Alpha... :-)

For Rdb, it would have been unlogical to stop development
on IA64 but not on Alpha.

On Friday, August 3, 2012 10:27:26 AM UTC+2, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
.. . .
.. . .
> For Rdb, it would have been unlogical to stop development
>=20
> on IA64 but not on Alpha.

Or to put it another way, Oracle "never ceased development" for the Rdb Fam=
ily of products for the Alpha Platform even though HP sales had officially =
ceased sales in 2007. The code for Rdb on Alpha and Integrity platforms are=
 essentially the same. Developing for Alpha is for most all intents and pur=
poses the same action as developing for Integrity. So all that was needed w=
as a small adjustment to the version numbering allowed for the code to be c=
ompiled and tested and released for the Integrity platform. Everything else=
 has remained completely the same as always. Even the sub-version numbering=
 scheme existed long before the Oracle new version release stop on integrit=
y.=20

Cheers!

Keith Cayemberg

On 8/2/2012 9:13 PM, David Froble wrote:
> I guess it is a timing thing.  Was the "last release" thing before or
> after the 2007 contract?  If after, then according to the court
> decision, Oracle would be obligated to continue to develop and sell RDB.

Any 2007 contract would not be involved here.

The relevant issue would be whether, prior to the Oracle-HP agreement 
regarding Mark Hurd, Oracle was in the habit of releasing new versions 
of Rdb on Itanium, and it was, so according to the judgment they are 
required to continue new releases as before.

On 8/2/2012 9:13 PM, David Froble wrote:
> But I don't think it was RDB and / or VMS that caused HP to file the
> suit ....

I'm sure you're right. I'm pretty sure Ellison was thinking only about 
HP-UX as a competitor to Solaris on SPARC and didn't even think about 
VMS (and almost certainly not about Rdb) when he made the decision. Rdb 
and VMS were just hit in the crossfire.

On 8/2/2012 11:57 PM, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
> In article <jveuaf$fo$2@usenet01.boi.hp.com>, Keith Parris
> <keithparris_deletethis@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> On 8/2/2012 6:33 AM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>>> Dirk Munk wrote 2012-08-02 14:05:
>>>> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>>>> There was a roadmap in Powerpoint that suggested  a new version of
>>>> RdB. It was discussed in this group.
>>>
>>> Yes, that should probably be 7.3. Not affected by the current news.
>>
>> It would be an Rdb version 7.4, 7.5, 8.0, etc. which would be again
>> allowed to go out, given the current news.
>
> OK, but as long as nothing changes but the version number, what does it
> matter?

It resets the 8-year timer for Oracle Lifetime Support, allowing active 
Engineering work on the product to extend farther into the future.

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:

> For Rdb, it would have been unlogical to stop development
> on IA64 but not on Alpha.

I ask this honestly: How much real development was still beig done on
RDB prior to the "we won't develop on IA64 anymore" event ?

Was RDB basically in maintenance mode with tweaks and ensuring it works
on new VMS versions, or was it truly still actively being
developped/changed with new features ?

Keith Parris wrote:

> Any 2007 contract would not be involved here.

Yes it would. The Hurd document simply re-affirms the 2007 contract
isn't cancelled as Oracle had threathened to do if HP continued with its
lawsuit.

Here is how it went:

HP: We don't like that you hired some dude we fired so we are suing you.
Oracle: Fine. If you sue us, we cancel the contract and stop developing
for HP-UX.

Settlement: HP removes the lawsuit, Oracle confirms original contract
isn't being cancelled.

JF Mezei wrote 2012-08-03 19:53:
> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>
>> For Rdb, it would have been unlogical to stop development
>> on IA64 but not on Alpha.
>
> I ask this honestly: How much real development was still beig done on
> RDB prior to the "we won't develop on IA64 anymore" event ?
>
> Was RDB basically in maintenance mode with tweaks and ensuring it works
> on new VMS versions, or was it truly still actively being
> developped/changed with new features ?
>

I guess it very much depends on two things:

1:
What exactly is a "new feature" ? Is it enough that it
it listed under "new features" in the release docs?
Or do you have some private definition?

2:
What timeframe are you talking about?

And, you can/could of course look this up yourself, not ?

See:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/products/rdb/learnmore/rdb-pmatrix-rdb-086351.html

and check the release notes for each release. The last four years:

2009: 4 releases
2010: 2 releases
2011: 1 release (7.2.5.0, a "new feature" release)
2012: 2 releases (so far)

Then check :
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/products/rdb/documentation/index.html

and check the release notes. The four newest RN's has this number
of sections in the "new features in this release" chapter:

7.2.5.2: 2 ("bug fix" release)
7.2.5.1: 4 ("bug fix" release)
7.2.5.0: 27. This was June-2011, one year ago.

Here is the list of "7.1 Enhancements And Changes Provided in
Oracle Rdb Release 7.2.5.0. :

7.1.1 RMU /SHOW STATISTICS /ROWS= and /COLUMNS=Feature
7.1.2 New LIMIT Clauses Implemented for the CREATE and ALTER PROFILE Statement
7.1.3 Use of RMS MBC Larger Than 127
7.1.4 New Optimizations for the LIKE Predicate
7.1.5 Additional Database Storage Area Checks
7.1.6 New Optimizations for the STARTING WITH Predicate
7.1.7 New Optimizations for the CONTAINING Predicate
7.1.8 Monitor Memory Management Enhancements
7.1.9 Average Transaction Duration Display Precision Increased
7.1.10 Support for New CONCAT_WS Builtin Function
7.1.11 New SYSTIMESTAMP Function Added
7.1.12 New SET FLAGS Keyword to Control Optimizer Query Rewrite
7.1.13 New SYS_GUID Function Added
7.1.14 New COMPRESSION Clause for DECLARE LOCAL TEMPORARY TABLE Statement
7.1.15 New COMPRESSION Clause for CREATE TABLE Statement
7.1.16 Support for 2 TiB Storage Area Files
7.1.17 New RMU/ALTER Feature to Modify the Root and Area Header Unique 
Identifier
7.1.18 New MATCHING Predicate
7.1.19 New RMU/BACKUP−RESTORE Feature to Check Database Page Integrity
7.1.20 New RMU/DUMP/BACKUP /AREA, /START and /END Qualifiers
7.1.21 Reduced CPU Usage and Improved Performance
7.1.22 New Logical Name to Control Sizing of LIST OF BYTE VARYING Pointer 
Segments
7.1.23 RMU /BACKUP Performance Improvements
7.1.24 New RMU/BACKUP/ENCRYPT "%RMU−I−ENCRYPTUSED" Message Added
7.1.25 New DATABASE_HANDLE Option for the GET DIAGNOSTICS Statement
7.1.26 New SYS_GET_DIAGNOSTIC Function Supported for SQL
7.1.27 Improved Error Handling for Database Disk Backup File Sets

I've no idea how many of these qualify as "new features" in your world
but I guess that there have been a fair deal of worktime put into this.

Jan-Erik.

Keith Parris wrote:
> On 8/2/2012 9:13 PM, David Froble wrote:
>> I guess it is a timing thing.  Was the "last release" thing before or
>> after the 2007 contract?  If after, then according to the court
>> decision, Oracle would be obligated to continue to develop and sell RDB.
> 
> Any 2007 contract would not be involved here.
> 
> The relevant issue would be whether, prior to the Oracle-HP agreement 
> regarding Mark Hurd, Oracle was in the habit of releasing new versions 
> of Rdb on Itanium, and it was, so according to the judgment they are 
> required to continue new releases as before.
> 

Help me out here ..

I thought the 2007 contract >>WAS<< the agreement regarding Mark Hurd ???  YOu know, the 
one we've been discussing ??

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:

> I've no idea how many of these qualify as "new features" in your world
> but I guess that there have been a fair deal of worktime put into this.


OK, so it appears there was real development done, but nothing earth
shattering (which is to be expected on an older product compared to a
new one that gets plenty of new features added in early releases to
catch up)

David Froble wrote:

> I thought the 2007 contract >>WAS<< the agreement regarding Mark Hurd ???  YOu know, the 
> one we've been discussing ??

Nop. The Hurd thing is in 2010.


2007 is when HP signed the deal to keep IA64 on life support with Intel
(Tukwila, Poulson and Kittson commitments), and when HP signed a
separate deal with Oracle to keep Oracle developped on IA64 systems.

On 8/3/2012 12:00 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
> Keith Parris wrote:
>
>> Any 2007 contract would not be involved here.
>
> Yes it would. The Hurd document simply re-affirms the 2007 contract
> isn't cancelled as Oracle had threatened to do if HP continued with its
> lawsuit.
>
> Here is how it went:

<speculation snipped>

The preliminary judgment at 
http://www.scefiling.org/filingdocs/194/53309/endorse_85234_111CV203163_PSOD.pdf 
tells us, based on the court testimony and exhibits:

3:16 "For approximately three decades Oracle ported its database, 
middleware, and key application software to HP's server platforms."
3:22 "The relationship was profitable for both parties."
4:1 "In April 2009, Oracle announced that it would acquire Sun Microsystems"
4:6 "HP was concerned whether Oracle would continue to offer its 
software on HP's hardware platforms now that Oracle would be competing 
with HP in the server market."
4:18 "[Oracle's most-senior software executive Thomas] Kurian told [HP's 
Dave] Donatelli that Oracle remained committed to the HP-Oracle 
partnership, and that new versions of Oracle software would continue to 
be released on HP-UX/Itanium at substantially the same time as on 
Oracle's Solaris/Sparc and IBM's AIX/Power platforms (a practice known 
as "release parity"). Kurian also told HP that its HP-UX/Itanium 
platforms would continue to enjoy functional parity. Neither release 
parity nor functional parity is possible if new versions of a software 
program are not offered on a given platform."
5:24 "Oracle specifically told HP in September 2010 that it intended to 
continue to offer new product releases on HP-UX/Itanium, and that HP 
would continue to have release parity with IBM and Sun."
6:5 "on September 6, 2010, Oracle announced that Hurd would be joining 
Oracle as its Co-President"
6:9 "The next day, September 7, HP initiated a lawsuit against Hurd in 
an effort to protect its trade secrets."
10:9 "The Settlement Agreement was executed by the parties on September 
20, 2010 (hereinafter referred to as the "Agreement"). Paragraph 1 of 
the Agreement provides:
_Reaffirmation of the Oracle-HP Partnership._ Oracle and HP reaffirm 
their commitment to their longstanding strategic relationship and their 
mutual desire to continue to support their mutual customers. Oracle will 
continue to offer its product suite on HP platforms, and HP will 
continue to support Oracle products (including Oracle Enterprise Linux 
and Oracle VM) on its hardware in a manner consistent with that 
partnership as it existed prior to Oracle's hiring of Hurd."
11:15 "As of September 2010, Oracle and HP had maintained a strategic, 
global partnership for thirty years and had thousands of joint 
customers. The partnership involved product development and porting 
work, and joint sales and support activities. The porting of Oracle 
products to HP platforms was foundational to the relationship."
12:15 "Once one of these major [Oracle] products was ported to Itanium, 
then all future releases of the same product were consistently ported to 
Itanium, and this practice continued without exception through September 
2010."
12:22 "The parties are in accord that over 99% of all porting to the 
HP-UX/Itanium was done without any written contracts."
12:26 "In the few instances where porting contracts were entered, the 
contract covered an initial port to HP-UX/Itanium of a product that had 
not previously been ported to the platforms. Subsequent versions of the 
product were ported to Itanium without further contracts."
13:7 "Ordinarily, HP has not paid Oracle to port its products to HP's 
platforms. In the handful of cases where HP did pay for an initial port, 
the payments were made to offset Oracle's out-of-pocket costs for the 
porting work. The course of conduct was that HP would provide servers to 
Oracle to be used in the porting process, where necessary. The parties 
each contributed their software personnel in order to effectuate the 
porting process."
13:15 "Oracle's course of conduct prior to its hiring of Hurd was to 
continue supporting a particular HP server line even after HP stopped 
selling that line. ... HP stopped selling PA-RISC servers in December 
2008. Oracle continued to port new products to PA-RISC for years after 
HP stopped selling the servers. Likewise, Oracle continued to port new 
products to Alpha after HP stopped selling Alpha servers in 2007. In the 
past Oracle never discontinued all software development for ANY 
microprocessor architecture while servers based on that architecture 
were still being sold to customers."
14:6 "Following the execution of the Agreement, the parties continued to 
engage in product development and porting work."
15:6 "In the period following the execution of the Agreement, Oracle 
undertook actions, including the doubling of the core factor used to set 
the price for Oracle software running on HP-UX/Itanium that strained the 
relationship. However, both companies' witnesses testified that the core 
partnership between the two companies, including the joint certification 
and porting work, continued throughout this period and up until the time 
of Oracle's March 2011 announcement."

On 8/3/2012 1:32 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
> 2007 is when HP signed the deal to keep IA64 on life support with Intel
> (Tukwila, Poulson and Kittson commitments),

OK.

> and when HP signed a
> separate deal with Oracle to keep Oracle developed on IA64 systems.

Reference, please?

On 8/2/2012 9:26 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
>  From what I read, the Hurd issue simply confirmed that a previous
> contract was not ended. So the fine print and dots on the i would be in
> the original contract, not in the Hurd agreement.

Actually, the Hurd Agreement confirmed that established practices (of 
porting and release of new versions) would continue. So those historical 
practices were effectively put into writing by Oracle and HP signing 
that Agreement.

The court found HP had kept up its end of the bargain after the 
Agreement, despite Oracle doing sneaky tricks like doubling the core 
factor for Itanium (thus raising the price of Oracle on Itanium compared 
with Sun).

On 8/2/2012 9:19 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
> I realise you are the messenger from HP. So I do not intend to shoot
> the messenger here.

And I hope you don't intend to do any shooting elsewhere, either.

> The wording put out never mentioned that IA64 is to be developped until
> 2022. It mentions that Intel is to make available chips until 2022. In
> other words, Intel will keep surplus IA64 chips until 2022.  This means
> available spares for support beyond end of sale. It doesn't mean
> continued development until 2022.

I'm not privy to the actual wording of the agreement. I picked up the 
word "develop" from the title of the Inquirer article, which said "HP 
can force Intel to develop Itanium until at least 2022", which I took at 
face value in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.

> (Note that HP did something similar with Alphas, with some "special"
> customers able to buy Alphas after the end of sales deadline).

Actually, HP Financial Services will happily sell you a refurbished 
Alphaserver even today, 5 years after the last-sale date for Alpha 
systems. I'm working with a customer who earlier this year purchased two 
32-CPU GS-1280 systems through HPFS. So you, too, can be a "special" 
customer -- if you can write that sort of check. :-)

> However, it is not clear how much software support and upgrades will be
> done to the IA64 operating systems. Once the last VMS patch is out to
> support the alst Kittson+ based model, will VMS patches continue to be
> produced ?  Will TCPIP Services continue to have new releases to support
> whatever protocol tweaks are made on the internet ?

I think we can safely use Alpha as a precedent. Patches for Alpha still 
continue today, 5 years after last-sale date, and plans are to continue 
that for some time to come (as detailed at 
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/openvms_supportchart.html).

> the roadmap has been shrunken to just a couple
> of . releases to support Poulson and Kittson.

I can't remember a time when the VMS Roadmap had more than 1 or 2 
releases in it at a time, plus a placeholder for "future" releases. So 
that hasn't changed.

> People understand that IA64 failed to garner market traction to become
> mainstream and failed to live up to performance expectations.

Poulson at 2.53 Ghz may help in that area.

> People see that HP has put it on life support to extend its lifetime.

Poulson and Kittson are more than life support. Read David Kanter at 
www.realworldtech.com/poulson/ and Intel's Poulson manual at
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/manuals/itanium-9500-reference-manual.zip 
and you'll see that Intel put a lot of engineering effort into Poulson. 
It is likely that Kittson and Kittson+ will have just as impressive a 
level of engineering work as Poulson.

> By basically
> lying to customers about the real plans for IA64, HP is destroying its
> enterprise vendor image

Intel came to HP in 2007 saying it couldn't continue with the status 
quo, and HP and Intel came to a satisfactory arrangement that made both 
of them happy, kept Itanium profitable, and allowed it to move forward 
through at least 2022. I don't see that as HP lying -- more like HP 
detecting a potentially-serious problem behind the scenes and fixing it 
before it could adversely affect the customers.

On 8/3/2012 3:29 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>
>> I've no idea how many of these qualify as "new features" in your world
>> but I guess that there have been a fair deal of worktime put into this.
>
>
> OK, so it appears there was real development done, but nothing earth
> shattering (which is to be expected on an older product compared to a
> new one that gets plenty of new features added in early releases to
> catch up)
>
I am not a DBA, but I know a few.  I have heard them say in the last few 
years that RDB on VMS is still the best DB engine out there.  If you 
don't consider the features added as being a big deal, then what would 
you expect.  It strikes me that the changes to any mature DB these days 
will revolve around bug fixes, better monitoring capabilities, and 
ability to handle ever lager sets of data.  It seems like RDB is doing 
that these days.

Just my humble opinion.  I could be wrong.  :)

-- 

Thomas Wirt
Operations Manager, IS Dept.
Kittle's Home Furnishings
Indianapolis, IN

On 8/3/2012 3:14 PM, Keith Parris wrote:
> On 8/2/2012 9:19 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
>> The wording put out never mentioned that IA64 is to be developped until
>> 2022. It mentions that Intel is to make available chips until 2022. In
>> other words, Intel will keep surplus IA64 chips until 2022.  This means
>> available spares for support beyond end of sale. It doesn't mean
>> continued development until 2022.
>
> I'm not privy to the actual wording of the agreement. I picked up the
> word "develop" from the title of the Inquirer article, which said "HP
> can force Intel to develop Itanium until at least 2022", which I took at
> face value in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.

The other factor in my choice of words is that Kirk Skaugen also 
testified that HP has the option to renew and extend that contract 
beyond 2022. If HP renewed, Intel would probably be asked to do another 
iteration of the chip at that point, and thus would need to keep enough 
development expertise around to achieve that.

Keith Parris wrote:
> On 8/2/2012 9:26 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
>>  From what I read, the Hurd issue simply confirmed that a previous
>> contract was not ended. So the fine print and dots on the i would be in
>> the original contract, not in the Hurd agreement.
> 
> Actually, the Hurd Agreement confirmed that established practices (of 
> porting and release of new versions) would continue. So those historical 
> practices were effectively put into writing by Oracle and HP signing 
> that Agreement.
> 
> The court found HP had kept up its end of the bargain after the 
> Agreement, despite Oracle doing sneaky tricks like doubling the core 
> factor for Itanium (thus raising the price of Oracle on Itanium compared 
> with Sun).

Hey, fuel costs for Larry's jet goes up every year ....

I'd feel that such tactics do not win friends.  Nor do they work in all cases.

I'm sure there might be some systems out there that are purely Oracle Servers, doing 
nothing else, and for such it might be rather easy for a customer to switch.  A 
businessman looks at the bottom line, and doesn't much care about the technical issues. 
For such a system, perhaps Oracle will sell some Sun systems.

Not a simple world.  Some will learn to dislike Oracle, and some will say "that's the 
lowest price, get it".  And many somewhere in between.

While it probably won't mean much to very many people, by charging more for an Itanium 
core, Oracle is basically saying "Itanium is better".  Whether they actually mean it or 
not is another issue.

Having never gotten close to Oracle, I'm curious.  Is it better than the competition?  Is 
there some overriding reason to get and / or stick with Oracle?

I had been under the impression that HP had announced some sort o deal
with Oracle to garantee continued availability on IA64 systems.

Remember that between 2004 and 2007, HP had that multi billion dollar
"porting fund" that was to help get software onto IA64 systems and it is
my impression that Oracle was a recipient of that. This may have been
prior to 2004 though.  in 2004, HP moved a lot of cash and the rest of
its chip engineering over to Intel so that fund could have gone there too.

"Stephen Hoffman" <seaohveh@hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote in message 
news:jvc8f5$9tf$1@dont-email.me...
>
> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
> Court finds Oracle breached contract, is required to port products to 
> Itanium." - Ars Technica
> <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/hp-wins-judgement-in-itanium-suit-against-oracle/>
>

This has gotta be good news! (Albeit incredibly surprising.)

HP could forgo any costs/damages in response to some re-stated commitment 
from Oracle to IA64?

Something to placate Larry's ego and save face and then we're away with 11g 
on VMS???????

Cheers Richard Maher 

"JF Mezei" <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote in message 
news:501c1023$0$39156$c3e8da3$88b277c5@news.astraweb.com...
> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>
>> For Rdb, it would have been unlogical to stop development
>> on IA64 but not on Alpha.
>
> I ask this honestly: How much real development was still beig done on
> RDB prior to the "we won't develop on IA64 anymore" event ?
>
> Was RDB basically in maintenance mode with tweaks and ensuring it works
> on new VMS versions, or was it truly still actively being
> developped/changed with new features ?

Nothing useful has been done with Rdb for years. Bit like VMS really only 
worse :-(

Just enough work to keep the ex-VMS snouts in the trough. Rdb "development" 
could have been outsourced to Bangalore years ago and you wouldn't see any 
difference except maybe Ian Smith et al having to work for a living.

Row-Cache my arse! Yeah that really caught on with all other DBMSs didn't 
it?

Regards Richard Maher 

Richard Maher wrote:

> HP could forgo any costs/damages in response to some re-stated commitment 
> from Oracle to IA64?


It would be interesting if the judge decided that damages paid by Oracle
to HP would only apply if Kittson+ is not the last iteration of IA64
(aka: Oracle's allegatiosn of EOL at Kittson+ are proven to be false).

With HP having wound down development teams for its IA64 operating
systems, it isn't really equipped to continue developping them for much
longer. And having to pay Intel to produce one extra generation of IA64
chip after Kittson+ might end up costing more than the value of the
damages that Oracle would have to pay.

And with BCS sales tanking, there would be less and less financial
justification to rebuild development teams for VMS, HP-UX and NSK AND
pay Intel for an extra generation of IA64  just for the sake of proving
Larry Ellison wrong.

On Aug 3, 10:14=A0pm, Keith Parris <keithparris_deletet...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
> On 8/2/2012 9:19 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
>
> > I realise you are the messenger from HP. So I do not intend to shoot
> > the messenger here.
>
> And I hope you don't intend to do any shooting elsewhere, either.
>
> > The wording put out never mentioned that IA64 is to be developped until
> > 2022. It mentions that Intel is to make available chips until 2022. In
> > other words, Intel will keep surplus IA64 chips until 2022. =A0This mea=
ns
> > available spares for support beyond end of sale. It doesn't mean
> > continued development until 2022.
>
> I'm not privy to the actual wording of the agreement. I picked up the
> word "develop" from the title of the Inquirer article, which said "HP
> can force Intel to develop Itanium until at least 2022", which I took at
> face value in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.
>
> > (Note that HP did something similar with Alphas, with some "special"
> > customers able to buy Alphas after the end of sales deadline).
>
> Actually, HP Financial Services will happily sell you a refurbished
> Alphaserver even today, 5 years after the last-sale date for Alpha
> systems. I'm working with a customer who earlier this year purchased two
> 32-CPU GS-1280 systems through HPFS. So you, too, can be a "special"
> customer -- if you can write that sort of check. :-)
>
> > However, it is not clear how much software support and upgrades will be
> > done to the IA64 operating systems. Once the last VMS patch is out to
> > support the alst Kittson+ based model, will VMS patches continue to be
> > produced ? =A0Will TCPIP Services continue to have new releases to supp=
ort
> > whatever protocol tweaks are made on the internet ?
>
> I think we can safely use Alpha as a precedent. Patches for Alpha still
> continue today, 5 years after last-sale date, and plans are to continue
> that for some time to come (as detailed athttp://h71000.www7.hp.com/openv=
ms/openvms_supportchart.html).
>
> > the roadmap has been shrunken to just a couple
> > of . releases to support Poulson and Kittson.
>
> I can't remember a time when the VMS Roadmap had more than 1 or 2
> releases in it at a time, plus a placeholder for "future" releases. So
> that hasn't changed.
>
> > People understand that IA64 failed to garner market traction to become
> > mainstream and failed to live up to performance expectations.
>
> Poulson at 2.53 Ghz may help in that area.
>
> > People see that HP has put it on life support to extend its lifetime.
>
> Poulson and Kittson are more than life support. Read David Kanter atwww.r=
ealworldtech.com/poulson/and Intel's Poulson manual athttp://www.intel.com/=
content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/manuals/i...
> and you'll see that Intel put a lot of engineering effort into Poulson.
> It is likely that Kittson and Kittson+ will have just as impressive a
> level of engineering work as Poulson.
>
> > By basically
> > lying to customers about the real plans for IA64, HP is destroying its
> > enterprise vendor image
>
> Intel came to HP in 2007 saying it couldn't continue with the status
> quo, and HP and Intel came to a satisfactory arrangement that made both
> of them happy, kept Itanium profitable, and allowed it to move forward
> through at least 2022. I don't see that as HP lying -- more like HP
> detecting a potentially-serious problem behind the scenes and fixing it
> before it could adversely affect the customers.

Thanks, I'll have a proper read of the Kanter article when I get time,
especially the bits on "reliability" and "scalability"; words which we
have heard in this context so many times in the past, typically with
little real substance. So on those subjects I'll particularly be
looking for features in IA64 which do not have equivalents in AMD64.

Meanwhile may I respectfully point out a couple of things: (1) the
modern Inquirer can't really be regarded as a reliable source for
"evidence", hopefully there is a more direct source you can quote (2)
what's really different between Itanium's commercial situation today
and Alpha's commercial situation before Alpha was declared EOL?

Both are/were small market-share chips in big markets overall, with
(Alpha's demonstrable and Itanium's alleged) performance advantage
largely outweighed by other disadvantages. Obviously Intel have got
much deeper pockets than DEC had back then, and therefore if they wish
they could keep IA64 alive, but who is actually benefiting by keeping
IA64 alive? IA64-committed customers (ie VMS users) obviously benefit
though what price do they pay for being IA64-dependent rather than
AMD64-dependent? Do Intel as a company benefit overall by keeping IA64
alive? Do HP as a company benefit overall, and in particular do they
benefit more than they would if the software from their "business
critical" stovepipe wasn't IA64-only?

Or are the people who benefit most actually just a few executives who
have made bad decisions in the past and don't want to admit in public
that mistakes happen and predictions aren't always right?

John Wallace schrieb:

> Or are the people who benefit most actually just a few executives who
> have made bad decisions in the past and don't want to admit in public
> that mistakes happen and predictions aren't always right?

I'm wondering whether the responsible executives are still
at HP or intel. The decision to scrap PA-RISC in favor
of that Itanic thing was made nearly two decades ago.
One of those crooks, Belluzzo (who not only helped ruining
the old HP, but was also instrumental in destroying SGI,
btw), is no longer active.
So there shouldn't be too many egos left still connected
with those decisions.

In article <jvg21a$9v1$1@news.albasani.net>, Jan-Erik Soderholm
<jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com> writes: 

> > OK, but as long as nothing changes but the version number, what does it
> > matter?
> 
> That is the point. Rdb management at the last Rdb tech days said
> (more or less) that they was uneffected (appart from the release
> number "thing") by the Oracle-stops-all-IA-64 development message.
> So it was business-as-usual even before the judgment yesterday.

Right, conform to the letter but not the spirit of the announcement.

In article <501c1023$0$39156$c3e8da3$88b277c5@news.astraweb.com>, JF
Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> writes: 

> > For Rdb, it would have been unlogical to stop development
> > on IA64 but not on Alpha.
> 
> I ask this honestly: How much real development was still beig done on
> RDB prior to the "we won't develop on IA64 anymore" event ?

More or less normal development.

> Was RDB basically in maintenance mode with tweaks and ensuring it works
> on new VMS versions, 

No.

> or was it truly still actively being
> developped/changed with new features ?

Yes.

On 2012-08-04 08:43:36 +0000, John Wallace said:

> 
> Thanks, I'll have a proper read of the Kanter article when I get time,
> especially the bits on "reliability" and "scalability"; words which we
> have heard in this context so many times in the past, typically with
> little real substance. So on those subjects I'll particularly be
> looking for features in IA64 which do not have equivalents in AMD64.

The RAS marketing can certainly look like "magic pixie dust" sometimes. 
 I've posted a RAS table <http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/95> where I 
could find comparable features listed in the then-current Intel x86 
Xeon server processors, and the Itanium processors.   If you find any 
more of those features from Poulson (or RAS features from AMD, for that 
matter) please let me know, and I'll update the table.


-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

On Fri, 03 Aug 2012 21:05:20 -0400, David Froble wrote:

> Keith Parris wrote:
>> 
>> Actually, the Hurd Agreement confirmed that established practices (of
>> porting and release of new versions) would continue. So those
>> historical practices were effectively put into writing by Oracle and HP
>> signing that Agreement.
>> 
>> The court found HP had kept up its end of the bargain after the
>> Agreement, despite Oracle doing sneaky tricks like doubling the core
>> factor for Itanium (thus raising the price of Oracle on Itanium
>> compared with Sun).
> 
> Hey, fuel costs for Larry's jet goes up every year ....

And will no doubt have taken another leap now he's bought his own 
island...
 
> I'd feel that such tactics do not win friends.  Nor do they work in all
> cases.

I am sure that "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on
me" [1] applies here.

 
> I'm sure there might be some systems out there that are purely Oracle
> Servers, doing nothing else, and for such it might be rather easy for a
> customer to switch.  A businessman looks at the bottom line, and doesn't
> much care about the technical issues. For such a system, perhaps Oracle
> will sell some Sun systems.

Even if the underlying database is feature (and bug?) consistent across 
all platforms, porting from one platform to another is still a major 
undertaking.  Switching from HP-UX/other to Solaris or Oracle's flavour 
of Linux is going to require recompilation and testing at the very least.

Even current RHEL customers are likely to find that switching to Oracle's 
Linux (which I understand is based on RHEL) is going to require serious 
work, and let's not forget those customers who require certification.

http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/linux/index.html

> Not a simple world.  Some will learn to dislike Oracle, and some will
> say "that's the lowest price, get it".  And many somewhere in between.

Agreed.  Somewhere in the host of articles I read during the HP-Oracle 
spat it was pointed out that Oracle probably knows exactly what a port 
away from their products will cost each customer.  In many cases all they 
need to do to retain customers is price their own products at something 
less than that amount.

> While it probably won't mean much to very many people, by charging more
> for an Itanium core, Oracle is basically saying "Itanium is better". 
> Whether they actually mean it or not is another issue.
> 
> Having never gotten close to Oracle, I'm curious.  Is it better than the
> competition?  Is there some overriding reason to get and / or stick with
> Oracle?

Many years ago I was told by the guy running the IT systems for a bunch 
of vehicle importers (another outsource provider like yourself :-)), that 
the moment you choose one database rather than any other you are looking 
at a lock-in.  If that database cannot deliver your own data back to you 
in the ways you need your business choices are limited, so you had better 
choose carefully.

FWIW the database his company was using back then was Cincom's TOTAL.  
This was before relational databases became so popular, but I see that 
Cincom is still alive and well, probably because unlike many others they 
resisted the pressure for an IPO and remain a privately held company.

TOTAL gets a mention here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database#Network_model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincom_Systems#1968.E2.80.931969

Customers like to deal with a stable company.

[1] (Roman Proverb - cue "What have the Romans ever done for us?").

-- 
Paul Sture

On Fri, 03 Aug 2012 17:54:32 -0400, Thomas Wirt wrote:

> On 8/3/2012 3:29 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
>> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>>
>>> I've no idea how many of these qualify as "new features" in your world
>>> but I guess that there have been a fair deal of worktime put into
>>> this.
>>
>>
>> OK, so it appears there was real development done, but nothing earth
>> shattering (which is to be expected on an older product compared to a
>> new one that gets plenty of new features added in early releases to
>> catch up)
>>
> I am not a DBA, but I know a few.  I have heard them say in the last few
> years that RDB on VMS is still the best DB engine out there.  If you
> don't consider the features added as being a big deal, then what would
> you expect.  It strikes me that the changes to any mature DB these days
> will revolve around bug fixes, better monitoring capabilities, and
> ability to handle ever lager sets of data.  It seems like RDB is doing
> that these days.
> 
> Just my humble opinion.  I could be wrong.  :)

A dozen and more years ago I was working with both Oracle Classic and Rdb 
folks and their opinion was that Rdb was more advanced than Classic.  
They also observed that various features of Rdb were gradually being 
implemented in Classic.

-- 
Paul Sture

John Wallace wrote:

> largely outweighed by other disadvantages. Obviously Intel have got
> much deeper pockets than DEC had back then, and therefore if they wish
> they could keep IA64 alive, 

Intel already signaled to HP that it wanted to kill IA64. It is HP which
is funding Intel to continue the work. So IA64 is essentially an HP chip
with HP having outsourced its development to Intel. And HP didn't want
us to know about this deal since it confirms that IA64 isn't a viable
business to Intel.

Also, Intel and HP have shareholders. Intel has clean hands because they
likely profit from performing that IA64 development contract paid for by HP.

HP on the other hand may start to get serious questions from
shareholders on why they are wasting so much money on IA64, especially
when BCS sales are tanking and HP already told shareholders there was
nothing they could do to stop it and that they hope to rebuild BCS based
on Project Odyssey.


> AMD64-dependent? Do Intel as a company benefit overall by keeping IA64
> alive? 

Intel is not the one keeping IA64 alive. HP is. Intel is merely
executing a contract paid for by HP to continue to develop (at slow
pace) that IA64 thing.



> Do HP as a company benefit overall, and in particular do they
> benefit more than they would if the software from their "business
> critical" stovepipe wasn't IA64-only?

Meg Whitman has already anounced that the tradictional BCS (aka: IA64
based) has no future and that BCS will be rebuilt based on 8086 servers
(project Odyssey).


> Or are the people who benefit most actually just a few executives who
> have made bad decisions in the past and don't want to admit in public
> that mistakes happen and predictions aren't always right?

HP has a history of bad governance (at least during the era where they
are responsible for VMS).  LaCarly was probably too dumb and just
executed stuff about IA64 that had been decided before.

Under Hurd, there was an attempt to port the BCS OS to 8086 because they
knew IA64 was to be EOLed by Intel, but this was cancelled, after which
the OS engineering teams were disbanded and maintenance sent to india.
From the point where HP decided that HP-UX, VMS etc wouldn't go beyond
IA64, their only option was the extend the lifetime for IA64. Intel was
to pull the plug so HP started to shift money to Intel to keep the thing
alive to give HP more time to think.

The only problem is that HP doesn't have the guts to say it out loud
because it fears it will accelerate loss of BCS business. Duh !

The thing is that customers are even more pissed off an HP NOT telling
them and more likely to choose another vendor because HP has failed to
make public porting plans, porting help, porting deals etc. (equivalent
to Alpha RetainTrust).

Michael Kraemer wrote:

> So there shouldn't be too many egos left still connected
> with those decisions.


Whitman has no vested interest. And they reduced Ann Livermore's role in
operations but she is still on the board. Livermore probably dates back
from early IA64 decisions.


The problem for whitman is how to manage the EOL of IA64. How to lose
the fewest enterprise customers as possible.  Their policy seems to be
to keep the EOL under wraps and just snow development to a crawl and
once that project odyssey thing is out, customers will see that the 8086
offers better price performance etc and migrate on their own.

Problem is that enterprise customers are not so stupid. They tought we
wouldn't notice the dismememberent of VMS engineering (in fact, the soon
to be ex  employees were forced to not talk about it publicly, and it is
only when it did come out that HP reluctantly agreed to have that live
web chat.

The fact that folsk like Keith Parris are now spouting off "developped
until 2022" means that HP is nowhere near ready to announce the EOL and
they will look even worse when they they the make the announcement.
Before that 2022 date emerged, the commitment ended at Kittson circa 2014.

In article <2give9-kut1.ln1@news1.chingola.ch>, Paul Sture <paul@sture.ch> writes:
> On Fri, 03 Aug 2012 21:05:20 -0400, David Froble wrote:
> 
>> Keith Parris wrote:
>>> 
>>> Actually, the Hurd Agreement confirmed that established practices (of
>>> porting and release of new versions) would continue. So those
>>> historical practices were effectively put into writing by Oracle and HP
>>> signing that Agreement.
>>> 
>>> The court found HP had kept up its end of the bargain after the
>>> Agreement, despite Oracle doing sneaky tricks like doubling the core
>>> factor for Itanium (thus raising the price of Oracle on Itanium
>>> compared with Sun).
>> 
>> Hey, fuel costs for Larry's jet goes up every year ....
> 
> And will no doubt have taken another leap now he's bought his own 
> island...
>  
>> I'd feel that such tactics do not win friends.  Nor do they work in all
>> cases.
> 
> I am sure that "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on
> me" [1] applies here.
> 
>  
>> I'm sure there might be some systems out there that are purely Oracle
>> Servers, doing nothing else, and for such it might be rather easy for a
>> customer to switch.  A businessman looks at the bottom line, and doesn't
>> much care about the technical issues. For such a system, perhaps Oracle
>> will sell some Sun systems.
> 
> Even if the underlying database is feature (and bug?) consistent across 
> all platforms, porting from one platform to another is still a major 
> undertaking.  Switching from HP-UX/other to Solaris or Oracle's flavour 
> of Linux is going to require recompilation and testing at the very least.
> 
> Even current RHEL customers are likely to find that switching to Oracle's 
> Linux (which I understand is based on RHEL) is going to require serious 
> work, and let's not forget those customers who require certification.

Converting the first RHEL system to Oracle Linux can be a real PITA.
The procedure, when it actually works instead of spewing vomit, is
poorly documented with some major required steps completely undocumented.
Once one knows all the pit falls and work arounds, then a conversion
should take about an hour (assuming a high speed internet connection)
and one reboot.  If you use the supplied RHEL kernel instead of the
Oracle kernel, there is a very good probability any application software
will just work unless you have something which requires rebuilding
against new kernels (e.g. vmware), etc.  Even the Oracle kernel will
probably just work.  Of course, YMMV.


George Cook

On Aug 5, 12:17=A0am, c...@wvnet.edu (George Cook) wrote:
> In article <2give9-kut1....@news1.chingola.ch>, Paul Sture <p...@sture.ch=
> writes:
> > On Fri, 03 Aug 2012 21:05:20 -0400, David Froble wrote:
>
> >> Keith Parris wrote:
>
> >>> Actually, the Hurd Agreement confirmed that established practices (of
> >>> porting and release of new versions) would continue. So those
> >>> historical practices were effectively put into writing by Oracle and =
HP
> >>> signing that Agreement.
>
> >>> The court found HP had kept up its end of the bargain after the
> >>> Agreement, despite Oracle doing sneaky tricks like doubling the core
> >>> factor for Itanium (thus raising the price of Oracle on Itanium
> >>> compared with Sun).
>
> >> Hey, fuel costs for Larry's jet goes up every year ....
>
> > And will no doubt have taken another leap now he's bought his own
> > island...
>
> >> I'd feel that such tactics do not win friends. =A0Nor do they work in =
all
> >> cases.
>
> > I am sure that "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on
> > me" [1] applies here.
>
> >> I'm sure there might be some systems out there that are purely Oracle
> >> Servers, doing nothing else, and for such it might be rather easy for =
a
> >> customer to switch. =A0A businessman looks at the bottom line, and doe=
sn't
> >> much care about the technical issues. For such a system, perhaps Oracl=
e
> >> will sell some Sun systems.
>
> > Even if the underlying database is feature (and bug?) consistent across
> > all platforms, porting from one platform to another is still a major
> > undertaking. =A0Switching from HP-UX/other to Solaris or Oracle's flavo=
ur
> > of Linux is going to require recompilation and testing at the very leas=
t.
>
> > Even current RHEL customers are likely to find that switching to Oracle=
's
> > Linux (which I understand is based on RHEL) is going to require serious
> > work, and let's not forget those customers who require certification.
>
> Converting the first RHEL system to Oracle Linux can be a real PITA.
> The procedure, when it actually works instead of spewing vomit, is
> poorly documented with some major required steps completely undocumented.
> Once one knows all the pit falls and work arounds, then a conversion
> should take about an hour (assuming a high speed internet connection)
> and one reboot. =A0If you use the supplied RHEL kernel instead of the
> Oracle kernel, there is a very good probability any application software
> will just work unless you have something which requires rebuilding
> against new kernels (e.g. vmware), etc. =A0Even the Oracle kernel will
> probably just work. =A0Of course, YMMV.
>
> George Cook

That's interesting.

I've read elsewhere (can't remember or quickly find where) that Oracle
Linux is mostly just RHEL without the branding (statements like that
need much more qualification). But what would Oracle want customers to
think was involved in moving from their own Linux variant to the best
known enterprise Linux in the industry (from which theirs is derived)?

On 2012-08-05 10:40:54 +0000, John Wallace said:
> 
> I've read elsewhere (can't remember or quickly find where) that Oracle
> Linux is mostly just RHEL without the branding (statements like that
> need much more qualification). But what would Oracle want customers to
> think was involved in moving from their own Linux variant to the best
> known enterprise Linux in the industry (from which theirs is derived)?

For folks migrating applications off of OpenVMS, RHEL on x86-64 is a 
common target.

Oracle (Enterprise) Linux is a repackaged version of the open-source 
parts of RHEL, with two kernels available; RHEL-compatible and Oracle's 
own "Unbreakable" kernel.

RedHat obviously provides support for RHEL, for those that want or need 
it.  And RH does restrict access to some parts of their RHEL distro to 
their own customers.  Oracle also provides support for RHEL, for Oracle 
Linux, and for CentOS.  The download for Oracle Linux is free, as is 
CentOS.

Fedora, CentOS, VMware ESX and other distros and packages are based on 
or are built on RHEL.

For those folks that are operating on a budget and that can eschew 
support, Fedora (bleeding edge) and CentOS (trailing edge) are a common 
starting point.  If (when?) the folks acquire requirements for formal 
OS support, that can then be obtained with a low-effort migration to 
RHEL or Oracle Linux, and (obviously) a support payment.


Reading Assignment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Enterprise_Linux

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_(operating_system)


-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

Facts:

1) In the past we saw DEC gracefully transition from PDP to VAX by being ve=
ry open with their plans "and" communicating those plans to their customers=
..

2) In the past we saw DEC gracefully transition from VAX to Alpha by being =
very open with their plans "and" communicating those plans to their custome=
rs.

For some reason, the transition from Alpha to Itanium was a lot less transp=
arent and poorly communicated.  HP's plans for Itanium and whatever comes n=
ext (like Project Odyssey) seem a joke in that they require their customer =
to engage in "Sherlock Holmes like" detective work at third-party web sites=
.. If HP was doing a better job of communicating with their current customer=
 as well as the public (which they should treat as potential future custome=
rs) then these third-party sites wouldn't have much to publish.

Just my 2-cents worth

Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/OpenVMS.html
=20

=20

On Wednesday, August 1, 2012 5:52:37 PM UTC-4, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
> 
> Court finds Oracle breached contract, is required to port products to 
> 
> Itanium." - Ars Technica
> 
> <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/hp-wins-judgement-in-itanium-suit-against-oracle/> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

I told everyone years ago that OpenVMS would be around as long as the government was using it, which we heard years ago was into the 2020s ...
All you doom sayers have been worrying over nothing.  OpenVMS will be around another 10 years and then ported if the government wants it to be.

"Keith Parris" <keithparris_deletethis@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:jvhd8d$2et$1@usenet01.boi.hp.com...
....snip...
> The court found HP had kept up its end of the bargain after the Agreement,
> despite Oracle doing sneaky tricks like doubling the core factor for
> Itanium (thus raising the price of Oracle on Itanium compared with Sun).
>

In light of the verdict and the contractual language, I queried HP
concerning the doubled core factor.  This was the response:

"...restoring the .5 multiplier that was in place prior to Mr. Hurd's 
departure is a number 1 priority for HP."

-Jeff

ultradwc@gmail.com wrote:

> I told everyone years ago that OpenVMS would be around as long as the government was using it, which we heard years ago was into the 2020s ...
> All you doom sayers have been worrying over nothing.  OpenVMS will be around another 10 years and then ported if the government wants it to be.


Will be around ? yes.
Will be supported? Yes.

Will be developped ?  Big question. It isn't even clear is VMS is
already in maintenance mode.


Will run on new hardware: HP's current answer on this is a definitive
"VMS will not be ported beyond IA64.  (this policy extends to HP-UX as well)


By stretching development, this ensures that when a new generation of
IA64 comes out, it is already late compared to other platforms. Tukwila
being a very good example.

Yes, compared to the previous generation of IA64, the new generation
will show great improvements.  But compared to market place, IA64 is
already years behind the competition.

Neil Rieck wrote:
> Facts:
> 
> 1) In the past we saw DEC gracefully transition from PDP to VAX by being very open with their plans "and" communicating those plans to their customers.
> 
> 2) In the past we saw DEC gracefully transition from VAX to Alpha by being very open with their plans "and" communicating those plans to their customers.
> 
> For some reason, the transition from Alpha to Itanium was a lot less transparent and poorly communicated.  HP's plans for Itanium and whatever comes next (like Project Odyssey) seem a joke in that they require their customer to engage in "Sherlock Holmes like" detective work at third-party web sites. If HP was doing a better job of communicating with their current customer as well as the public (which they should treat as potential future customers) then these third-party sites wouldn't have much to publish.
> 
> Just my 2-cents worth
> 
> Neil Rieck
> Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
> Ontario, Canada.
> http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/OpenVMS.html
>  
> 
>  
> 

When Compaq bought DEC there was a very big change in attitude.  You see, DEC had 
"customers", while Compaq had "sales".

The more you think about that, the more you realize just how much the customers lost.

David Froble wrote:

> When Compaq bought DEC there was a very big change in attitude.  You see, DEC had 
> "customers", while Compaq had "sales".


From what I was told, it wasn't hard for DEC to confince Pfeiffer of the
value of the customer relationshup softwre Digital had (something which
Compaq lacked).

Renember that Pfeiffer wanted Compaq to become an enterprise company and
wanted Alpha etc.  It is when he was outsted than the goodwil that we,
as VMS customers had seen, vanished.

The gas pump commercials were from Pfeiffer,s time, not from the time
when Compaq had Curly as interim CEO. (and when Compaq gave up tryinfg
to find a replacement for Pfeiffer, Curly became permanent CEO whose
mandate was to find someone to buy Compaq.

On 8/4/2012 2:43 AM, John Wallace wrote:
> Meanwhile may I respectfully point out a couple of things: (1) the
> modern Inquirer can't really be regarded as a reliable source for
> "evidence", hopefully there is a more direct source you can quote

 From the court documents (HP Summary Motion, 
http://www.scribd.com/doc/86895474/HP-Summary-Motion)

3:15 "in March 2008 HP ... signed a written contract, called the Itanium 
Collaboration Agreement" (the "ICA") with Intel. ... the ICA committed 
the parties to a roadmap that extended out over three future generations 
of the Itanium processor -- code-named Tukwila, Poulson, and Kittson -- 
with each having enhanced performance and technological features. In 
October 2010, HP and Intel renegotiated their Itanium relationship by 
way of an amendment to the ICA. Through this amendment HP agreed to 
increase its investment, and the parties redefined the Itanium roadmap 
to ensure even greater performance and enhanced features for upcoming 
generations of Itanium -- a roadmap that will carry the Itanium line 
deep into the current decade, and ensure a foundation for continued 
development of further generations of the Itanium microprocessor. Intel 
has confirmed that this amendment enabled HP to have access to the 
Itanium microprocessor through 2022 and that HP "could extend it even 
longer." As Intel explained to customers in March 2011, it "firmly 
believe(s) that the Itanium platform provides a sound foundation for 
mission critical computing well through this coming decade," and it has 
already "start[ed] exploratory work for what comes after Kittson."

So the 2008 ICA covered Tukwila, Poulson, and Kittson, and the Oct. 2010 
Amendment went beyond Tukwila, Poulson, and Kittson to "ensure a 
foundation for continued development of _further generations_ of the 
Itanium microprocessor" [emphasis mine], and Intel has already started 
"work for what comes after Kittson." Kittson+ would thus be the first of 
the "further generations," and note the reference to "generations" is 
plural.

On 8/6/2012 1:39 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
> ultradwc@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> I told everyone years ago that OpenVMS would be around as long as the government was using it, which we heard years ago was into the 2020s ...
>> All you doom sayers have been worrying over nothing.  OpenVMS will be around another 10 years and then ported if the government wants it to be.
>
> Will be around ? yes.
> Will be supported? Yes.
>
> Will be developed ?  Big question. It isn't even clear if VMS is
> already in maintenance mode.

Maintenance mode would be bug-fixes-only. OpenVMS development certainly 
doesn't match that description, by any stretch of the imagination.

> Will run on new hardware: HP's current answer on this is a definitive
> "VMS will not be ported beyond IA64.  (this policy extends to HP-UX as well)

"Beyond IA64" is too far out in the future at this point. The OpenVMS 
Roadmap at http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/pdf/openvms_roadmaps.pdf is 
clear that OpenVMS development work for new hardware is very active, 
including, to name a few:
-Poulson-based blades and rackmount servers
-3PAR storage
-FireMV graphics
-Solid-state disks (SSDs)
-Virtual Connect FlexFabric

> By stretching development, this ensures that when a new generation of
> IA64 comes out, it is already late compared to other platforms. Tukwila
> being a very good example.
 >
 > Yes, compared to the previous generation of IA64, the new generation
 > will show great improvements.  But compared to market place, IA64 is
 > already years behind the competition.

Tukwila was in 65 nm process and the contemporary Power7 was in 45 nm 
process. Poulson is in 32 nm process, same as Power7+ is expected to be 
when it is released. So the situation you described is no longer the case.

Keith Parris wrote:

> October 2010, HP and Intel renegotiated their Itanium relationship by 
> way of an amendment to the ICA.

This was basically the stretching of the timeline for the original
contract. And it also took into account that with the delying of each
generation, they would need to update the promised specs to take into
consideration new FAB sizes and increased clock rates etc. (This is why
Poulson is coming out in a smaller mask than had originally been
planned, but the mask it is to use isn't even state of the art anymore).


> deep into the current decade, and ensure a foundation for continued 
> development of further generations of the Itanium microprocessor. 

The "further generations" refers to Tukwila, Poulson and Kittson.

A contract is a contract. It doesn't specify generations that are not
convered by the contract.


>Intel 
> has confirmed that this amendment enabled HP to have access to the 
> Itanium microprocessor through 2022

This is simply is stocking/wharehouse issue to make the parts available
until 2022.


> Itanium microprocessor" [emphasis mine], and Intel has already started 
> "work for what comes after Kittson." Kittson+ would thus be the first of 
> the "further generations," and note the reference to "generations" is 
> plural.

Kittson+ is not to be a new generation. It is a mere speedbump, like
EV7z was to EV7. Note: it uses the same name as Kittson, which would be
a dead gveaway that it is the same generation.  And like for EV7,
ittson+ is likely going to be a selection of chips from Kittson
production that are good enough to be fed higher clock rates.

On 8/8/2012 1:02 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
 > Poulson is coming out in a smaller mask than had originally been
 > planned, but the mask it is to use isn't even state of the art anymore).

Tell that to IBM, whose Power7+ is expected to come out in the same size 
32 nm process as Poulson.

> Keith Parris wrote:
>> deep into the current decade, and ensure a foundation for continued
>> development of further generations of the Itanium microprocessor.
>
> The "further generations" refers to Tukwila, Poulson and Kittson.

Kittson occurs "deep into the current decade" and then there is 
"continued development of further generations" later in the same 
sentence. Ordering is implied.
>
> A contract is a contract. It doesn't specify generations that are not
> convered by the contract.
>
>
>> Intel
>> has confirmed that this amendment enabled HP to have access to the
>> Itanium microprocessor through 2022
>
> This is simply is stocking/wharehouse issue to make the parts available
> until 2022.
>
>
>> Itanium microprocessor" [emphasis mine], and Intel has already started
>> "work for what comes after Kittson." Kittson+ would thus be the first of
>> the "further generations," and note the reference to "generations" is
>> plural.
>
> Kittson+ is not to be a new generation. It is a mere speedbump, like
> EV7z was to EV7. Note: it uses the same name as Kittson, which would be
> a dead gveaway that it is the same generation.  And like for EV7,
> ittson+ is likely going to be a selection of chips from Kittson
> production that are good enough to be fed higher clock rates.
>
>

Keith Parris wrote:

> Tukwila was in 65 nm process and the contemporary Power7 was in 45 nm 
> process. Poulson is in 32 nm process, same as Power7+ is expected to be 
> when it is released. So the situation you described is no longer the case.

Poulson was not originally going to be 32nm. But because it was
postponed for so long, HP would have been ridiculed for coming out in
2012 with a chip that wasn't at least 32.

However, just because, when they decided to use more moderns masks for
Poulson in when they decided to postpone Tukwila, Poulson and Kittson
does not mean that a delayed chip results in significantly more work
being done to improve the actual chip design.

The point of delaying the releases was to have a longer life for IA64 at
roughly the same cost to HP.

Remember that to HP, keeping IA64 on life support is to save face and
not have to tell customers that IA64 is already dead. It is a PR
exercise, so they need only palatable enough performance out of that
IA64 thing.

Meanwhile, IBM is after bragging rights and wants Power to be world
leading, and they want to catch those lucrative supercomputer deals.
Look at the clockrate on those things. (currently at 4.4GHz, rumoured to
be boosted to over 5 for Power7+). It's incentive isn't to avoid telling
customers it is cancelling Power, it is to be the best of the best.


Lets face it, IA64 is basically in maintenance mode with 2 more releases
left with contractually fixed amount of work done on each. Clock rates
may be improved through use of smaller masks, but it doesn't mean that
the architecture and chip implementations are still significantly being
improved. Adding cores doesn't really improve the processing units.

Had HP paid Intel to ramp up IA64's performance to beat Power7, HP
wouldn't have told investors they have given up on Integrity and banking
on Odyssey to rebuild BCS.




So HP's expectations on IA64 are merely to slow the loss of IA64
customers to better control the migration to the 8086. But if HP thinks
that releasing Poulson is enough to do the job, it is sadly mistaken
because to slow the rate of customer loss, HP now need to be honest with
customers and provide clear migration plans and offer sweet deals.

This is especially true of VMS customers who have been on that platform
since last century and cannot easily port overnight to a Unix system.
The time they need for a proper port will span the remaining lifetime
for IA64 so they need to start now.

Keith Parris wrote:

> Kittson occurs "deep into the current decade" and then there is 
> "continued development of further generations" later in the same 
> sentence. Ordering is implied.

If this is from the 2007/2008 contract, then "deep into current decade"
means that Kittson was originally planned for 2009. Which doesn't make
sense since at the time of the 2007/20078 contract, Tukwila wasn't out
yet, which would have meant release of Tukwila, Poulson and Kittson in a
2  year time line which is not realistically possible.

If this is from the 2010 contract adjustement, "deep into the current
decade" implies post 2015. With at least a 3 year gap between Poulson
and Kittson, it isn't clear there will be much interest left in IA64 by
the time Kittson comes out so.

There really isn't much motivation to really work on improving IA64
since IA64 is already dead in the market (and in contracts). The only
motivation is to execute contracts and fulfill promises of at least 2
more generations made by HP to customers.  What each generation provides
in terms of performance is not very important. And we saw this with Tukwila.

On 8/8/2012 2:08 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
> If this is from the 2007/2008 contract, then "deep into current decade"
....
> If this is from the 2010 contract adjustment, "deep into the current
> decade" implies post 2015.

It was from the 2010 Amendment.

On 6-8-2012 23:40, Keith Parris wrote:
> The OpenVMS Roadmap at
> http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/pdf/openvms_roadmaps.pdf
> is clear that OpenVMS development work for new hardware is very active,
> including, to name a few:
> -Poulson-based blades and rackmount servers
> -3PAR storage
> -FireMV graphics
> -Solid-state disks (SSDs)
> -Virtual Connect FlexFabric

That sounds excellent, I'm especially pleased to read that the rumor
surrounding new supported graphics hardware is no longer a rumor!

I just hope that, at the time this will appear, I'll have a system
with a PCI-Express backplane.

  - MG

JF Mezei wrote:
> Keith Parris wrote:
> 
>> Tukwila was in 65 nm process and the contemporary Power7 was in 45 nm 
>> process. Poulson is in 32 nm process, same as Power7+ is expected to be 
>> when it is released. So the situation you described is no longer the case.
> 
> Poulson was not originally going to be 32nm. But because it was
> postponed for so long, HP would have been ridiculed for coming out in
> 2012 with a chip that wasn't at least 32.
> 
> However, just because, when they decided to use more moderns masks for
> Poulson in when they decided to postpone Tukwila, Poulson and Kittson
> does not mean that a delayed chip results in significantly more work
> being done to improve the actual chip design.
> 
> The point of delaying the releases was to have a longer life for IA64 at
> roughly the same cost to HP.
> 
> Remember that to HP, keeping IA64 on life support is to save face and
> not have to tell customers that IA64 is already dead. It is a PR
> exercise, so they need only palatable enough performance out of that
> IA64 thing.
> 
> Meanwhile, IBM is after bragging rights and wants Power to be world
> leading, and they want to catch those lucrative supercomputer deals.
> Look at the clockrate on those things. (currently at 4.4GHz, rumoured to
> be boosted to over 5 for Power7+). It's incentive isn't to avoid telling
> customers it is cancelling Power, it is to be the best of the best.
> 
> 
> Lets face it, IA64 is basically in maintenance mode with 2 more releases
> left with contractually fixed amount of work done on each. Clock rates
> may be improved through use of smaller masks, but it doesn't mean that
> the architecture and chip implementations are still significantly being
> improved. Adding cores doesn't really improve the processing units.
> 
> Had HP paid Intel to ramp up IA64's performance to beat Power7, HP
> wouldn't have told investors they have given up on Integrity and banking
> on Odyssey to rebuild BCS.

I can hope that I'm wrong, but it appears to me that HP-UX is more on HP's mind 
than VMS, and, HP-UX customers would probably have a much easier port to 
Unix/Linux than most VMS customers.

If that is so, then any commitment to IA-64 would be mainly for HP-UX.

What keeps coming back to my thoughts is that HP gave some people from India 
several (maybe 6) weeks of "training" with the VMS development people, then sent 
them back to India and got rid of much of the US based VMS development team.

I once saw a person charging senior people rates for new hires right out of 
college.  His response when challenged on it was "why not?  They have a brain". 
  He collected the money for a while, but quickly lost the trust of the customers.

I don't think it's possible to replace the years of experience, not just in 
doing things, but experience in "the VMS way", with a totally new group.  That 
leads me to the conclusion that sooner or later, HP gives up on VMS.  The 
current situation is that they will take the money from captive users as long as 
they can.  I doubt they consider VMS when they think (if they actually can 
think) of the future.

I can hope to be wrong, but that's how I read the situation.

> So HP's expectations on IA64 are merely to slow the loss of IA64
> customers to better control the migration to the 8086. But if HP thinks
> that releasing Poulson is enough to do the job, it is sadly mistaken
> because to slow the rate of customer loss, HP now need to be honest with
> customers and provide clear migration plans and offer sweet deals.
> 
> This is especially true of VMS customers who have been on that platform
> since last century and cannot easily port overnight to a Unix system.
> The time they need for a proper port will span the remaining lifetime
> for IA64 so they need to start now.
> 

What I don't understand JF, is why you're so intent to get people off VMS.  You 
got some ax to grind here?  You're not helpful.

On Thu, 09 Aug 2012 15:39:00 -0400, David Froble wrote:

> I once saw a person charging senior people rates for new hires right out
> of college.  His response when challenged on it was "why not?  They have
> a brain".
>   He collected the money for a while, but quickly lost the trust of the
>   customers.

I gather that is common practice with the large consultancies, though I 
haven't come across it myself.

-- 
Paul Sture

David Froble wrote:

> What I don't understand JF, is why you're so intent to get people off VMS.  You 
> got some ax to grind here?  You're not helpful.


HP has stated on multiple occasions that there is no porting of IA64
operating systems beyond IA64. They have not rescinded or given hints
that they could rethink this.

HP has already reduced VMS support/development to a bare minimum, with
the new kids on the block making many mistakes. (such as the initial
DIRECTORY bug in the early 8.4). The roadmap has been scaled back to
essentially supporting new servers as they are produced.

The Oracle issue has uncovered the fact that HP has lied to customers by
pretending there was no edn in sight for IA64 when in fact they have
signed a contract with Intel to postpone and manage the end of IA64.

Considering that the remaining VMS installed base has strong ties to VMS
features that make it hard to migrate,  I feel the installed base needs
to start thinking about moving to another platform NOW so that they can
do this in a careful and thought out plan without having to rush.

HP has shown that its PR cannot be trusted  with regards to the real
future of IA64. And as long as HP continues to lie to customers, you
can't really know what its true intentions and timing are going to be.

With the serious drop in BCS business over the last year, HP will be
under considerable pressure to stop wasting money on IA64 (now that
financial analysts know that HP has been dumping serious cash into this
money pit, they may be asking serious questions about ending IA64 sooner
rather than later.

JF Mezei wrote:
> David Froble wrote:
> 
>> What I don't understand JF, is why you're so intent to get people off VMS.  You 
>> got some ax to grind here?  You're not helpful.
> 
> 
> HP has stated on multiple occasions that there is no porting of IA64
> operating systems beyond IA64. They have not rescinded or given hints
> that they could rethink this.
> 
> HP has already reduced VMS support/development to a bare minimum, with
> the new kids on the block making many mistakes. (such as the initial
> DIRECTORY bug in the early 8.4). The roadmap has been scaled back to
> essentially supporting new servers as they are produced.
> 
> The Oracle issue has uncovered the fact that HP has lied to customers by
> pretending there was no edn in sight for IA64 when in fact they have
> signed a contract with Intel to postpone and manage the end of IA64.
> 
> Considering that the remaining VMS installed base has strong ties to VMS
> features that make it hard to migrate,  I feel the installed base needs
> to start thinking about moving to another platform NOW so that they can
> do this in a careful and thought out plan without having to rush.
> 
> HP has shown that its PR cannot be trusted  with regards to the real
> future of IA64. And as long as HP continues to lie to customers, you
> can't really know what its true intentions and timing are going to be.
> 
> With the serious drop in BCS business over the last year, HP will be
> under considerable pressure to stop wasting money on IA64 (now that
> financial analysts know that HP has been dumping serious cash into this
> money pit, they may be asking serious questions about ending IA64 sooner
> rather than later.
> 

I think that a lot of people are aware of all you've said.  That doesn't mean 
they agree with your conclusions.  But you do more than disiminate information. 
  You urge people to leave VMS ASAP.  None of what you've written above explains 
that.  So I ask again, what ax are you grinding?

David Froble wrote:

> that.  So I ask again, what ax are you grinding?

Since HP doesn't care about VMS customers enough to inform them of the
true future, I do not feel that VMS customers should continue to be HP
customers.

For all the criticism of Compaq's Alphacide, at the very least, it was a
decisive announcement without much prior speculation. It was
a mistake to make the announcement before the replacement platform was
available (and before that platform had shown better performance).

Right now, the death of IA64 is dragging on and on with HP being the
only one refusing to admit the obvious and HP not presenting its project
Odyssey, likely because they fear that once it is out, customers will
realise it is the end of the line for IA64.

Problem is that custoemrs already know it is the end of the line for
IA64 and think HP is really stupid for not providing guidance on where
to move from here, especially for VMS and NSK who have unique services
that make migration to Unix more difficult.

JF Mezei wrote:
> David Froble wrote:
> 
>> that.  So I ask again, what ax are you grinding?
> 
> Since HP doesn't care about VMS customers enough to inform them of the
> true future, I do not feel that VMS customers should continue to be HP
> customers.

While it might be nice if someone better than HP was maintaining VMS, whether or 
not people remain on VMS and HP customers IS NOT YOU DECISION TO MAKE, and NONE 
OF YOUR BUSINESS!

In article <50241aa5$0$45478$c3e8da3$aae71a0a@news.astraweb.com>,
 JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

> HP has stated on multiple occasions that there is no porting of IA64
> operating systems beyond IA64. They have not rescinded or given hints
> that they could rethink this.

Fine, port AXP to i86x64.

-- 
May joy be yours all the days of your life! - Phina
We are but a moment's sunlight, fading in the grass. - The Youngbloods
Those who eat natural foods die of natural causes. - Kperspective

In article <50247c06$0$44537$c3e8da3$f017e9df@news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> writes:
> 
> Since HP doesn't care about VMS customers enough to inform them of the
> true future, I do not feel that VMS customers should continue to be HP
> customers.
> 

   Since my VAXen and Alphas run just fine without HP's help, I've not
   been a Compaq nor HP customer when it comes to VMS.  And I'll keep
   using VMS like that.

   But yes, if I need a new VMS system I will get it from whatever
   vendor is selling them that week.

On 10-8-2012 5:12, JF Mezei wrote:
> Since HP doesn't care about VMS customers enough to inform them of the
> true future, I do not feel that VMS customers should continue to be HP
> customers.

Are you paid to be such a drama queen, or does it just come naturally
to you?  I'm normally a live and let die kind of person, I don't try
to interfere, but you're really starting to hit a nerve and starting
to annoy me to no end with this constant whining.

I mean, for crying out loud, is it ever enough?  Don't you think we
got your point the first time?  So you don't use VMS anymore and you
don't care for it anymore.  Why should I care?  You're just wasting
bandwidth.

  - MG

Bob Koehler wrote:

>    Since my VAXen and Alphas run just fine without HP's help, I've not
>    been a Compaq nor HP customer when it comes to VMS.  And I'll keep
>    using VMS like that.

Hardware is not really the issue here. You can cannabalise VAXes for
parts and run VAXes for very long time.

The problem is evolution of VMS.  The world keeps moving, standards
evolve, new applications and protocols come around. If VMS doesn't
evolve with the world and doesn't add those protocols, you get left
behind or have to start developping on a new platform.

If you use VMS to run a paper mill built in the 1980s, you can still be
on VAX because you don't need to change anything. If/when they change
the machinery, that VAX will be replaced with wathever computer comes
with the new paper mill machinery.

But if your business is connected to the internet, you really need to be
able to evolve with the market.

MG wrote:
> Don't you think we
> got your point the first time?  


David Frobble returned to c.o.v. after a long absence and asked me point
blank to explain my position.

In article <502536f3$0$44430$c3e8da3$f017e9df@news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> writes:
> 
> The problem is evolution of VMS.  The world keeps moving, standards
> evolve, new applications and protocols come around. If VMS doesn't
> evolve with the world and doesn't add those protocols, you get left
> behind or have to start developping on a new platform.

   And too many folks rush into them just because of the hype that
   runs the software industry, and then pay for it through security
   holes that were designed in.

   No thanks.

JF Mezei wrote:
> MG wrote:
>> Don't you think we
>> got your point the first time?  
> 
> 
> David Frobble returned to c.o.v. after a long absence and asked me point
> blank to explain my position.

Sure, blame me.

I seem to recall that I've politely suggested that your position didn't make 
much sense to me, more than once.  Then I got fed up and asked you specifically, 
what is you issue.  You came back, and finally, stated that you were on a 
mission to get people off VMS, and specifically, not to be an HP customer.

Now that you've come out of the closet, I think you're going to find that people 
don't need you to make their decisions for them.  Now that you've confessed your 
goal, you may find that your goal is rejected by many others.

If you have something helpful to contribute, fine.  Otherwise ....

David Froble wrote:

> Now that you've come out of the closet, I think you're going to find that people 
> don't need you to make their decisions for them.  Now that you've confessed your 
> goal, you may find that your goal is rejected by many others.

I am not in any position to get others off VMS. And I don't make
decisions for others.

But I am in a position to look at what has happened and what is
happening and see a path set by HP years ago that is becoming clearer
and clearer and more difficult to change. That path leads to VMS in
maintenance mode and an end to new IA64 servers in probably 3 years
(although they may remain on sale for some time depending on contractual
obligations and how long HP is willing to commit to supporting the
hardware).  And end of sales in 2015 means at least 5 years of hardware
support bringing this to 2020.

The writing is on the wall. If you refuse to see it because you don't
want the bad news, don't blame me.

JF Mezei wrote 2012-08-11 03:55:
> David Froble wrote:
>
>> Now that you've come out of the closet, I think you're going to find that people
>> don't need you to make their decisions for them.  Now that you've confessed your
>> goal, you may find that your goal is rejected by many others.
>
> I am not in any position to get others off VMS. And I don't make
> decisions for others.
>
> But I am in a position...

That is part of the problem, you are not in any position at all,
not one that relates to the currect state of VMS, at least.

You are not a current VMS customer, right ?
You are not visiting any current VMS events, are you ?
You could not check the latest release notes for Rdb before
claiming it also in maintaines mode. And so on. You are
just whining.

It perfectly clear that you have some personal problem with
VMS, HP, Intel, Itanium and so on.
It is also true, as other have said, that your posts arn't
helpfull at all, even I you think so. For us that actualy *work*
with VMS, your posts ended beeing helpfull many years ago...

Jan-Erik.



  to look at what has happened and what is
> happening and see a path set by HP years ago that is becoming clearer
> and clearer and more difficult to change. That path leads to VMS in
> maintenance mode and an end to new IA64 servers in probably 3 years
> (although they may remain on sale for some time depending on contractual
> obligations and how long HP is willing to commit to supporting the
> hardware).  And end of sales in 2015 means at least 5 years of hardware
> support bringing this to 2020.
>
> The writing is on the wall. If you refuse to see it because you don't
> want the bad news, don't blame me.
>

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:

> You could not check the latest release notes for Rdb before
> claiming it also in maintaines mode. And so on. You are
> just whining.


Please retract this statement. I asked if RDB was still truly being
developped or not. I did not state it wasn't being developped.

On Fri, 10 Aug 2012 21:55:21 -0400, JF Mezei wrote:

> And end of sales in 2015 means at least 5 years of hardware support
> bringing this to 2020.
> 
> The writing is on the wall. If you refuse to see it because you don't
> want the bad news, don't blame me.

The problem there is that 2020 takes me (and I assume a fair few other 
contributors here) to retirement age.

As it happens I don't depend on VMS for my livelihood any more, but for 
the others who do, have you considered that you are actively trying to 
wreck the last few years of their working lives?

-- 
Paul Sture

Paul Sture wrote:

> As it happens I don't depend on VMS for my livelihood any more, but for 
> the others who do, have you considered that you are actively trying to 
> wreck the last few years of their working lives?

Are you saying that VMS supporters should hide the evidence and tell
their bosses that VMS and IS64 are still a safe platform with long
future and is still actively devloppped with all sort so new features
planned for it ?


When bosses find out that those pro-VMS guys had their heads in the sand
and that VMS is soon to be in maintenance mode and IA64 EOLed, those
pro-VMS guys may lose their jobs because they did not warn their bosses
of the impending need to change.

While VMS systems will likely run well into the 2020s on old hardware,
any shop that needs a VMS OS that evolves will start to feel the pinch
soon since there are no significant changes to VMS in the roadmap anymore.

Those who rely on VMS for their jobs are better off telling their
superiors that VMS has a finite lifetime and get employer paid training
on Linux or whatever to help with the multi year transition.

On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 15:01:01 -0400, JF Mezei wrote:

> Paul Sture wrote:
> 
>> As it happens I don't depend on VMS for my livelihood any more, but for
>> the others who do, have you considered that you are actively trying to
>> wreck the last few years of their working lives?
> 
> Are you saying that VMS supporters should hide the evidence and tell
> their bosses that VMS and IS64 are still a safe platform with long
> future and is still actively developed with all sort so new features
> planned for it ?

Not at all.  I simply think that your time would be better spent pursuing 
interests other than VMS and HP bashing.

Having seen your posts on the comp.sys.mac.* newsgroups you don't seem to 
be happy with Apple's current direction either.

JF, you are an intelligent guy, but please stop playing the victim. Find 
something else to keep you busy.

-- 
Paul Sture

On 8/11/12 3:01 PM, in article
5026abee$0$44357$c3e8da3$f017e9df@news.astraweb.com, "JF Mezei"
<jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

> Paul Sture wrote:
> 
>> As it happens I don't depend on VMS for my livelihood any more, but for
>> the others who do, have you considered that you are actively trying to
>> wreck the last few years of their working lives?
> 
> Are you saying that VMS supporters should hide the evidence and tell
> their bosses that VMS and IS64 are still a safe platform with long
> future and is still actively devloppped with all sort so new features
> planned for it ?
> 
> 
> When bosses find out that those pro-VMS guys had their heads in the sand
> and that VMS is soon to be in maintenance mode and IA64 EOLed, those
> pro-VMS guys may lose their jobs because they did not warn their bosses
> of the impending need to change.
> 
> While VMS systems will likely run well into the 2020s on old hardware,
> any shop that needs a VMS OS that evolves will start to feel the pinch
> soon since there are no significant changes to VMS in the roadmap anymore.
> 
> Those who rely on VMS for their jobs are better off telling their
> superiors that VMS has a finite lifetime and get employer paid training
> on Linux or whatever to help with the multi year transition.

Its been my experience that if you only have experience on X and need paid
training on Y, and you've been there a few years (meaning you make more $$$
than an entry level person), you are sent packing. There is no loyalty to
company employees. They'd rather hire grads from the local tech schools.

So the best thing is to upgrade your skillset so that you are already
prepared. As for how this fits in with this topic, ISTM that if a shop has
stayed with VMS this long, they have already stayed longer than most.

"JF Mezei" <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote in message 
news:502690dc$0$1213$c3e8da3$76a7c58f@news.astraweb.com...
> Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>
>> You could not check the latest release notes for Rdb before
>> claiming it also in maintaines mode. And so on. You are
>> just whining.
>
>
> Please retract this statement. I asked if RDB was still truly being
> developped or not. I did not state it wasn't being developped.

Yep, that was me and Blind Freddy. 

On 08/09/12 20:05, Paul Sture wrote:

>
> I gather that is common practice with the large consultancies, though I
> haven't come across it myself.
>

Quite common in industry as well. The theory being chuck them in the deep
end and see what they are made of. It can be a good thing if you are trying
to build people, but may not be so good if it's a customer facing role...

Regards,

Chris

In article <rcoif9-008.ln1@news1.chingola.ch>, Paul Sture <paul.nospam@sture.ch> writes:
>On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 15:01:01 -0400, JF Mezei wrote:
>
>> Paul Sture wrote:
>> 
>>> As it happens I don't depend on VMS for my livelihood any more, but for
>>> the others who do, have you considered that you are actively trying to
>>> wreck the last few years of their working lives?
>> 
>> Are you saying that VMS supporters should hide the evidence and tell
>> their bosses that VMS and IS64 are still a safe platform with long
>> future and is still actively developed with all sort so new features
>> planned for it ?
>
>Not at all.  I simply think that your time would be better spent pursuing 
>interests other than VMS and HP bashing.
>
>Having seen your posts on the comp.sys.mac.* newsgroups you don't seem to 
>be happy with Apple's current direction either.
>
>JF, you are an intelligent guy, but please stop playing the victim. Find 
>something else to keep you busy.

He should stop bashing the USA too and move here.  Then, he could join the
millions of victims who engage the vermin of the US Court system to persue
monetary opulence (which, as we all know, money makes everything right as
rain again) for their victimization.  I could direct him to the sleaziest
pettifogger in all of the US.  JF could retain this schmuck who'd browbeat
a lucrative settlement even out of the likes of the Dalai Lama!

-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

JF Mezei wrote:

> Those who rely on VMS for their jobs are better off telling their
> superiors that VMS has a finite lifetime and get employer paid training
> on Linux or whatever to help with the multi year transition.

Or, get fired and the boss hired people already trained in Linux ??

I get the hint.

In article <rcoif9-008.ln1@news1.chingola.ch>,
 Paul Sture <paul.nospam@sture.ch> wrote:

> JF, you are an intelligent guy, but please stop playing the victim. Find 
> something else to keep you busy.

I know his point.  I'm upset with where VMS and Mac OS X is going too.  
But I'm not knocking VMS.  I wasted some time a week or so ago knocking 
Apple, because they let me down as I see it.  I expect that's what his 
real issue is with HP and VMS.

In fact, I installed VMS 7.3 on a simH instance a few days ago... :-)

-- 
May joy be yours all the days of your life! - Phina
We are but a moment's sunlight, fading in the grass. - The Youngbloods
Those who eat natural foods die of natural causes. - Kperspective

On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 01:07:00 -0600, Howard S Shubs wrote:

> In article <rcoif9-008.ln1@news1.chingola.ch>,
>  Paul Sture <paul.nospam@sture.ch> wrote:
> 
>> JF, you are an intelligent guy, but please stop playing the victim.
>> Find something else to keep you busy.
> 
> I know his point.  I'm upset with where VMS and Mac OS X is going too.
> But I'm not knocking VMS.  I wasted some time a week or so ago knocking
> Apple, because they let me down as I see it.  I expect that's what his
> real issue is with HP and VMS.

Yes I understand his point as well.  It's the constant repetition that 
pushed me to post what I did.
 
> In fact, I installed VMS 7.3 on a simH instance a few days ago... :-)

When I was ploughing through huge wedges of Windows documentation SimH 
and the Alpha emulators gave me valuable moments of sanity :-)

-- 
Paul Sture

On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 22:10:44 +0000, ChrisQ wrote:

> On 08/09/12 20:05, Paul Sture wrote:
> 
> 
>> I gather that is common practice with the large consultancies, though I
>> haven't come across it myself.
>>
>>
> Quite common in industry as well. The theory being chuck them in the
> deep end and see what they are made of. It can be a good thing if you
> are trying to build people, but may not be so good if it's a customer
> facing role...

It's fine when they are a member of a team and have backup from their 
base...

-- 
Paul Sture

Paul Sture wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 22:10:44 +0000, ChrisQ wrote:
> 
>> On 08/09/12 20:05, Paul Sture wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I gather that is common practice with the large consultancies, though I
>>> haven't come across it myself.
>>>
>>>
>> Quite common in industry as well. The theory being chuck them in the
>> deep end and see what they are made of. It can be a good thing if you
>> are trying to build people, but may not be so good if it's a customer
>> facing role...
> 
> It's fine when they are a member of a team and have backup from their 
> base...
> 

My comment was about putting such a person to work for a customer, and charging 
the customer the rate for a senior person.  Now, even if on a team, the customer 
is NOT getting what he's paying for.  Even worse, any senior people on the team 
are not giving the customer what he's paying for, if they spend part of their 
time training a newbie.  If you want to have such on a team for learning 
purposes, Ok, but don't charge the customer for your training costs.

On 08/12/12 17:14, David Froble wrote:

>
> My comment was about putting such a person to work for a customer, and
> charging the customer the rate for a senior person. Now, even if on a
> team, the customer is NOT getting what he's paying for. Even worse, any
> senior people on the team are not giving the customer what he's paying
> for, if they spend part of their time training a newbie. If you want to
> have such on a team for learning purposes, Ok, but don't charge the
> customer for your training costs.

It may not be ethical, but the customer ends up paying the training costs
one way or another anyway. The more significant point is that the newbie
may provide advice which results in serious damage to the client business
and in some cases there may be safety issues as well.

That sort of thing always comes from the top though, from company policy or
general standards...

Regards,

Chris

In article <5025bb8a$0$1198$c3e8da3$eb767761@news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> writes:

> The writing is on the wall. If you refuse to see it because you don't
> want the bad news, don't blame me.

   Haven't we been hearing this since the early 90s?

On Friday, August 17, 2012 10:09:47 AM UTC-4, Bob Koehler wrote:
>> In article <5025bb8a$0$1198$c3e8da3$eb767761@news.astraweb.com>
>> JF Mezei writes:
>> The writing is on the wall. If you refuse to see it because you don't
>> want the bad news, don't blame me.
>    Haven't we been hearing this since the early 90s?

Yes, and mostly from the same person.  :)

On 8/1/2012 3:52 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle

Bill Highleyman has a nice summary in the August issue of Availability 
Digest Magazine: 
http://www.availabilitydigest.com/public_articles/0708/hp_oracle.pdf

On 8/1/2012 3:52 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle

Oracle has filed its objection to the court's Proposed Statement of 
Decision: 
http://www.scefiling.org/filingdocs/14198/53924/endorse_86221_OraclexsxObjectionsxtoxCourtxsxProposedxSOD.pdf

Most of it seems to whining that things didn't go its way, and that the 
court took HP's side. For example:

"Like HP, Oracle submitted 30 pages of proposed findings. ... The Court 
chose to work off of HP�s proposed findings instead, adopted the vast 
majority of them verbatim, and supplemented that with additional 
content. By and large, the Court did not specifically address Oracle�s 
proposed findings. A few appear in the Proposed Statement of Decision, 
but for the most part the Court simply edited and added to HP�s proposed 
findings and therefore did not say anything about Oracle�s."

"The Court took the form of proposed statement of decision that HP 
drafted for its declaratory relief cause of action under the Hurd 
agreement and modified it, explicitly applying it to �both the breach of 
contract and promissory estoppel causes of action brought by HP.�"

Some of it is threats:

"Oracle will appeal this decision. Ultimately this case will be decided 
in the appellate courts."

And there seems to be some fear that if they don't immediately 
recommence porting for Itanium they may be in contempt of court:

"The Court�s holding ... that Oracle is obligated �to continue to offer 
its product suite on HP�s Itanium-based server platforms� and �Oracle is 
required to port its products to HP�s Itanium-based servers� � appears 
to be an operative mandate."

"If consistency with the partnership leaves Oracle without any 
discretion to cease porting, then the instant any Itanium port of any 
part of the �product suite� is not delivered (an inevitability unless 
Oracle recommences porting), Oracle will be in breach."

"Oracle believes that the Court should clarify now whether it intends 
the PSOD to order Oracle to recommence porting to Itanium."

But Oracle says they're willing to do that, apparently in hopes of 
escaping a Phase 2 of this trial (which awards damages). But if Phase 2 
proceeds, they threaten that in that case they _won't_ recommence porting:

"In other words, Oracle will recommence porting its software to Itanium 
immediately on the terms the Court orders. This would give HP the relief 
it has always sought in this case while ensuring Oracle an immediate 
appeal." ... "Otherwise the parties and the Court will expend many 
months and resources on a Phase 2 trial that may not be needed, and HP 
will be months from receiving a porting order from this Court (which 
will then be stayed pending appeal)."

And I found this piece very interesting:

"Oracle also objects to and requests clarification and findings 
regarding the Court�s reference to �HP�s Itanium-based server platforms� 
in paragraphs 2-5, in that it is unclear what the Court means by that 
term, specifically as to the operating systems covered."

As Oracle doesn't run on NonStop, and Windows and Red Hat Linux already 
dropped support, OpenVMS (and maybe SuSE Linux, which still supports 
Itanium, but of course isn't an HP operating system) seem to be the only 
other Itanium operating systems conceivably involved (other than HP-UX, 
of course). Is Oracle here trying to weasel out of any obligation to 
continue porting Oracle Server (and developing Oracle Rdb) for OpenVMS 
on Itanium?

It's also apparently trying to weasel out of commitments if it can, 
based on wording and semantics:
"Oracle also objects to and requests clarification and findings 
regarding the Court�s references to �continue to offer� and �port,� in 
that it is unclear whether the Court is reading �continue to offer� to 
mean �continue to develop� or �continue to port�."

So Oracle would like to continue to sell ("offer"), but not do any 
development on, or porting to, Itanium. But isn't that just what they're 
already trying to do? Nice try. :-)

The Pre-Trial Conference for Phase 2 of the trial is scheduled for 
August 29, 2012, with the Joint Pre-Trial Conference Statement to be 
filed by August 24.

Keith Parris wrote:
> On 8/1/2012 3:52 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> "HP wins judgement in Itanium suit against Oracle
> 
> Oracle has filed its objection to the court's Proposed Statement of 
> Decision: 
> http://www.scefiling.org/filingdocs/14198/53924/endorse_86221_OraclexsxObjectionsxtoxCourtxsxProposedxSOD.pdf 
> 
> 
> Most of it seems to whining that things didn't go its way, and that the 
> court took HP's side. For example:

Does that mean HP's bribe was larger than Oracle's ??

> "Like HP, Oracle submitted 30 pages of proposed findings. ... The Court 
> chose to work off of HP�s proposed findings instead, adopted the vast 
> majority of them verbatim, and supplemented that with additional 
> content. By and large, the Court did not specifically address Oracle�s 
> proposed findings. A few appear in the Proposed Statement of Decision, 
> but for the most part the Court simply edited and added to HP�s proposed 
> findings and therefore did not say anything about Oracle�s."
> 
> "The Court took the form of proposed statement of decision that HP 
> drafted for its declaratory relief cause of action under the Hurd 
> agreement and modified it, explicitly applying it to �both the breach of 
> contract and promissory estoppel causes of action brought by HP.�"
> 
> Some of it is threats:
> 
> "Oracle will appeal this decision. Ultimately this case will be decided 
> in the appellate courts."

Of course.  That's the system.  More money for the lawyers, and time for 
another round of bribes.

> And there seems to be some fear that if they don't immediately 
> recommence porting for Itanium they may be in contempt of court:

Unless they get a stay, that should be correct.

> "The Court�s holding ... that Oracle is obligated �to continue to offer 
> its product suite on HP�s Itanium-based server platforms� and �Oracle is 
> required to port its products to HP�s Itanium-based servers� � appears 
> to be an operative mandate."
> 
> "If consistency with the partnership leaves Oracle without any 
> discretion to cease porting, then the instant any Itanium port of any 
> part of the �product suite� is not delivered (an inevitability unless 
> Oracle recommences porting), Oracle will be in breach."
> 
> "Oracle believes that the Court should clarify now whether it intends 
> the PSOD to order Oracle to recommence porting to Itanium."
> 
> But Oracle says they're willing to do that, apparently in hopes of 
> escaping a Phase 2 of this trial (which awards damages). But if Phase 2 
> proceeds, they threaten that in that case they _won't_ recommence porting:
> 
> "In other words, Oracle will recommence porting its software to Itanium 
> immediately on the terms the Court orders. This would give HP the relief 
> it has always sought in this case while ensuring Oracle an immediate 
> appeal." ... "Otherwise the parties and the Court will expend many 
> months and resources on a Phase 2 trial that may not be needed, and HP 
> will be months from receiving a porting order from this Court (which 
> will then be stayed pending appeal)."
> 
> And I found this piece very interesting:
> 
> "Oracle also objects to and requests clarification and findings 
> regarding the Court�s reference to �HP�s Itanium-based server platforms� 
> in paragraphs 2-5, in that it is unclear what the Court means by that 
> term, specifically as to the operating systems covered."
> 
> As Oracle doesn't run on NonStop, and Windows and Red Hat Linux already 
> dropped support, OpenVMS (and maybe SuSE Linux, which still supports 
> Itanium, but of course isn't an HP operating system) seem to be the only 
> other Itanium operating systems conceivably involved (other than HP-UX, 
> of course). Is Oracle here trying to weasel out of any obligation to 
> continue porting Oracle Server (and developing Oracle Rdb) for OpenVMS 
> on Itanium?

Maybe they want to support VMS but not HP-UX ??  Would be amusing.  Then 
they will point to RDB, and avoid any Oracle Classic.

> It's also apparently trying to weasel out of commitments if it can, 
> based on wording and semantics:
> "Oracle also objects to and requests clarification and findings 
> regarding the Court�s references to �continue to offer� and �port,� in 
> that it is unclear whether the Court is reading �continue to offer� to 
> mean �continue to develop� or �continue to port�."
> 
> So Oracle would like to continue to sell ("offer"), but not do any 
> development on, or porting to, Itanium. But isn't that just what they're 
> already trying to do? Nice try. :-)

I've got to believe they could have just done this, without saying a 
word.  That leads to the question, "just why did they go so public?". 
Perhaps the intent was to harm HP.

> The Pre-Trial Conference for Phase 2 of the trial is scheduled for 
> August 29, 2012, with the Joint Pre-Trial Conference Statement to be 
> filed by August 24.

Keith Parris wrote:

> Oracle has filed its objection to the court's Proposed Statement of 
> Decision: 

Not unexpected. Out of this, they may get a few concessions that may
help Oracle in the future. (see later)

At the end of the day, Oracle did sign the agreement on paper. It is
binding. And as long as there are new IA64 boxes in the pipeline it is
pretty hard for Oracle to weasel out of that paper contract.

What Oracle should have added to the contract is an opt-out cluase in
case market conditions change and BCS sales start to drop sharply or
something like that. (aka: if the business potential for IA64 based
sales of Oracle software drop significantly, Oracle obligations should
be ended.)

> "The Court�s holding ... that Oracle is obligated �to continue to offer 
> its product suite on HP�s Itanium-based server platforms� and �Oracle is 
> required to port its products to HP�s Itanium-based servers� � appears 
> to be an operative mandate."

This may be used by Oracle on many fronts. You could show that the
court/judge did not fully understand the issues by using that term
instead of specifying operating system AND IA64.

Oracle may succeed in having that text changed to be specific about
operating system(s).

And once HP announces the EOL of those systems, one could argue the
contract also becomes voided.

Oracle will want to have better definition of when that commitment can
or does end.


> "Oracle also objects to and requests clarification and findings 
> regarding the Court�s references to �continue to offer� and �port,� in 
> that it is unclear whether the Court is reading �continue to offer� to 
> mean �continue to develop� or �continue to port�."

If the court used imprecise wording, then it is normal for Oracle to
request changes/clarification to be precise in the wording. Oracle needs
to tell its shareholders how much this folly will cost it, so they need
to find out about all the dots on the "i"s  so they can properly
calculate exactly what their obligation is.

Say HP were to announce end of development for HP-UX, but continued
sales of HP-UX and IA64 boxes. Would Oracle then have a way out ? That
is what Oracle will want to have specified by the judge who clerly didn't.

In article <503707fc$0$45458$c3e8da3$aae71a0a@news.astraweb.com>,
	JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> writes:
> Keith Parris wrote:
> 
>> Oracle has filed its objection to the court's Proposed Statement of 
>> Decision: 
> 
> Not unexpected. Out of this, they may get a few concessions that may
> help Oracle in the future. (see later)
> 
> At the end of the day, Oracle did sign the agreement on paper. It is
> binding. And as long as there are new IA64 boxes in the pipeline it is
> pretty hard for Oracle to weasel out of that paper contract.
> 
> What Oracle should have added to the contract is an opt-out cluase in
> case market conditions change and BCS sales start to drop sharply or
> something like that. (aka: if the business potential for IA64 based
> sales of Oracle software drop significantly, Oracle obligations should
> be ended.)
> 
>> "The Court�s holding ... that Oracle is obligated �to continue to offer 
>> its product suite on HP�s Itanium-based server platforms� and �Oracle is 
>> required to port its products to HP�s Itanium-based servers� � appears 
>> to be an operative mandate."
> 
> This may be used by Oracle on many fronts. You could show that the
> court/judge did not fully understand the issues by using that term
> instead of specifying operating system AND IA64.
> 
> Oracle may succeed in having that text changed to be specific about
> operating system(s).
> 
> And once HP announces the EOL of those systems, one could argue the
> contract also becomes voided.
> 
> Oracle will want to have better definition of when that commitment can
> or does end.
> 
> 
>> "Oracle also objects to and requests clarification and findings 
>> regarding the Court�s references to �continue to offer� and �port,� in 
>> that it is unclear whether the Court is reading �continue to offer� to 
>> mean �continue to develop� or �continue to port�."
> 
> If the court used imprecise wording, then it is normal for Oracle to
> request changes/clarification to be precise in the wording. Oracle needs
> to tell its shareholders how much this folly will cost it, so they need
> to find out about all the dots on the "i"s  so they can properly
> calculate exactly what their obligation is.
> 
> Say HP were to announce end of development for HP-UX, but continued
> sales of HP-UX and IA64 boxes. Would Oracle then have a way out ? That
> is what Oracle will want to have specified by the judge who clerly didn't.

Or, Oracle can price it to reflect the actual cost of maintaining this
port given the expected (or even real) number of sales.

I expect that would bring it to an end fairly quickly.

I really don't understand how a court can order a private company to
loose money.  I don't remember the courts ordering Ford to keep making
Edsels.  And, yes, I know a lot of people who actually like them!!

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999@cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>   

In article <a9pa0gFnsqU1@mid.individual.net>, billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill
Gunshannon) writes: 

> I really don't understand how a court can order a private company to
> loose money.  

Without commenting on the HP-Oracle sandbox spat, in general I don't see 
a problem:  If a company signs a contract and doesn't fulfill it, then 
of course someone can complain in civil court and the court can order 
them to fulfill it, even if they lose money.  Most cases where someone 
doesn't want to fulfill a contract involve losing money, but they 
fulfill it anyway, since the think it is good to honour the contract or 
fear punishment if they don't.

If I sign a contract with a building firm to build a house for a fixed 
price, and the building firm then pulls out because they miscalculated 
something, prices of bricks have gone up or whatever, then of course a 
court can order them to honour the contract, even if they lose money.

JF Mezei wrote:

> If the court used imprecise wording, then it is normal for Oracle to
> request changes/clarification to be precise in the wording. Oracle needs
> to tell its shareholders how much this folly will cost it, so they need
> to find out about all the dots on the "i"s  so they can properly
> calculate exactly what their obligation is.

This suggestion of "how much this folly will cost them" really has no merit.

Would HP really care about Oracle, if their customers were not buying 
and using Oracle?  I doubt it.

So, Oracle is a company that offers a product, and charges large amounts 
of money for it.  If HP customers continue to purchase Oracle, then 
isn't that what Oracle is in business to do, sell product for profit?

Only if you can show that the investment in selling to HP customers is 
greater than the income from HP customers could anyone make a case for 
Oracle dropping HP customers.  I seriously doubt you can do so.  If the 
market was that small, HP never would have cared what Oracle did.

So, if selling to HP customers is not a money losing business, then 
what's this all about?

1) Oracle buys Sun, and wants to hurt a Sun competitor ?

2) HP fires Larrys good buddy Hurd, and Larry is going to punish HP ?

3) ?????

Frankly, while it doesn't make business sense, I'll choose door #2. 
Hell, Larry just bought himself an island, and will most likely have his 
own private airstrip for his jet.  You got to wonder just how much he 
needs the money.  Exercising his ego might be more important to him.

Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> Or, Oracle can price it to reflect the actual cost of maintaining this
> port given the expected (or even real) number of sales.

They've already done something similar, by charging more for an IA-64 
core than a Sparc core.  At least that's my understanding.

> I expect that would bring it to an end fairly quickly.
> 
> I really don't understand how a court can order a private company to
> loose money.  I don't remember the courts ordering Ford to keep making
> Edsels.  And, yes, I know a lot of people who actually like them!!

Because Oracle signed a contract.  When you sign a contract, you're 
expected to deliver on your obligations.

Remember, when a contract is signed, one of the parties (HP) may take 
actions that need the results of the contract, and can be seriously hurt 
if the other party does not follow through.

Then there is your assumption that Oracle will lose (Steven is going to 
jump on your use of "loose") money.  Selling their product is how they 
make money.  I seriously doubt Oracle will lose any money charging huge 
amounts for their overpriced product.

On 08/24/12 16:48, David Froble wrote:

>
> Frankly, while it doesn't make business sense, I'll choose door #2.
> Hell, Larry just bought himself an island, and will most likely have his
> own private airstrip for his jet. You got to wonder just how much he
> needs the money. Exercising his ego might be more important to him.

The guy is a maverick, like all great entrepreneurs. You can love ot 
hate him,
but he does at least know how to run a business to make profit.

The industry could do with a few more like him...

Regards,

Chris

ChrisQ wrote:
> On 08/24/12 16:48, David Froble wrote:
> 
>>
>> Frankly, while it doesn't make business sense, I'll choose door #2.
>> Hell, Larry just bought himself an island, and will most likely have his
>> own private airstrip for his jet. You got to wonder just how much he
>> needs the money. Exercising his ego might be more important to him.
> 
> The guy is a maverick, like all great entrepreneurs. You can love ot 
> hate him,
> but he does at least know how to run a business to make profit.
> 
> The industry could do with a few more like him...
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Chris
> 
> 

Yeah, and we've had similar in the past.  Coal barrons, Railroad 
magnates, and such, making hugh profits while standing on the necks of 
the people doing the work.  Workers try to unionize to get some better 
treatment, no problem, hire thugs with ax handles to break some heads.

No thanks ...

Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> I really don't understand how a court can order a private company to
> loose money.  I don't remember the courts ordering Ford to keep making
> Edsels.  And, yes, I know a lot of people who actually like them!!


A court doesn't order a company to lose money. They order a company to
honour a contract it signed and deliver the goods/services specified in
that contract.

Oracle signed that contract.  What the court basicaly said is that the
contract is valid forever and to end it, Oracle needs to sign another
contract with HP to void the first one.


In this new phase, Oracle may be seeking ways for the court to specify
some triggers that automaticaly void the contract. (such as HP
announcing  HP-UX not being ported beyond IA64 and that Kittson is to be
last of IA64 chips)


That contract looks like it was scribbled on a napkin in a bar. In 2010,
it was obvious that IA64 had not succeeded and would remain a low volume
proprietary niche chip supported by HP at very high cost. It was obvious
that the 8086 would supplant it for 64 bit performance.

Oracle was plain stupid or perhaps Ellison was drunk when he signed it.

HP paid Intel the big bucks to keep quiet about the planned end of IA64.
And they got Oracle to stupidly commit to develop for IA64 until HP
tells them it is OK to stop.  So HP is in full control over the EOL
plans for its legacy BCS business and can stretch the remaining life
however it wants with the big partners contractually bound to follow
without complaints.

On 08/24/12 18:25, David Froble wrote:

>
> Yeah, and we've had similar in the past. Coal barrons, Railroad
> magnates, and such, making hugh profits while standing on the necks of
> the people doing the work. Workers try to unionize to get some better
> treatment, no problem, hire thugs with ax handles to break some heads.
>
> No thanks ...

Sorry, David, can't let that go. Do we protesteth too much perchance ?.

I can see why some people in this group might be seriously anti and perhaps
with good reason, but let's not have double standards please. For 
example, Apple
have restrictive trade practices and get their kit manufactured in (on 
the necks
of the workers) cheap labour plants, while google have serious privacy 
and other
issues with the way they collect and use data. Then we have Intel and 
all the
horror stories about people who work in their plants. Are all richer 
than Oracle,
or am I mistaken there ?.

Seems to me that all big business is suspect, but that's the way it 
seems to work
and there's probably little that can be done about it, other than mass 
boycott of
the product, which is unlikely.

They obviously build a quality product that many want to buy, 
irrespective of the
fact that it's expensive. Hp have even taken legal action to maintain 
access to it,
so what's wrong with that ?. Sounds like the normal successfull us 
business model
to me.

Ok, am playing devil's advocate a bit here :-)...

Regards,

Chris

David Froble wrote:

> This suggestion of "how much this folly will cost them" really has no merit.

It is quite important. Because the contract is open ended, HP is able to
force Oracle to continue to develop for IA64 for as long as HP feels it
necessary.

In other words, because of the open ended nature of the contract, there
is a risk that Oracle will be forced to continue to develop even of it
looses money due to the shrunken state of the IA64 environment.

This is a risk/liability that needs to be quantified and reported to
shareholders.

If Oracle can get the court to fine tune the wording to provide some
metrics that end the contract, it can then quantify the potential
liability and reduce the potential losses in the long term.

Oracle amy still be making money from the IA64 eco system, but with
sales drobbing very very fast, it isn't clear how much longer Oracle
will continue to see IA64 as being profitable.

ChrisQ wrote:
> On 08/24/12 18:25, David Froble wrote:
> 
>>
>> Yeah, and we've had similar in the past. Coal barrons, Railroad
>> magnates, and such, making hugh profits while standing on the necks of
>> the people doing the work. Workers try to unionize to get some better
>> treatment, no problem, hire thugs with ax handles to break some heads.
>>
>> No thanks ...
> 
> Sorry, David, can't let that go. Do we protesteth too much perchance ?.

Possibly, but it's actions like those of Larry that totally screw up 
things for most people.

Now, it appears that he's using his company's products to unfairly 
(yeah, depends on who's defining it, I know) attempt to hurt HP's business.

Perhaps you might remember the asshole who wrote Diskeeper ?  Turns out 
he was a religious nut case, and when he found out that a drug company 
that manufactured a drug that he didn't agree with was a Diskeeper 
customer, he tried yanking their license, even though they had already 
paid for the product.

In my opinion, and maybe I'm unique, a business should follow some moral 
values.  For Larry, just run your own business, don't try to ruin others.

The story went around in the past about the small company that thought 
they had a deal with Microsoft.  When it went sour, and they asked "what 
went wrong?", alledgly someone from Microsoft replied "your problem is 
that you trusted us".

Pulls out well used soapbox ...

Capitalism only works when all parts strive toward a common goal.  It 
fails as soon as any part of the whole gets greedy and tries to screw 
over other parts.  Possibly why principals of socialism seem to appeal 
to so many people.

Kicks soapbox back into corner ...

> I can see why some people in this group might be seriously anti and perhaps
> with good reason, but let's not have double standards please. For 
> example, Apple
> have restrictive trade practices and get their kit manufactured in (on 
> the necks
> of the workers) cheap labour plants, while google have serious privacy 
> and other
> issues with the way they collect and use data. Then we have Intel and 
> all the
> horror stories about people who work in their plants. Are all richer 
> than Oracle,
> or am I mistaken there ?.

Apple isn't the only game in town, and for a while things seemed pretty 
bleak for them.  They turned it around with hard work, good ideas, and 
such.  This is good.  But can you tell me one thing Apple sells that 
cannot be had elsewhere?  Apple provides the better mouse trap, they 
don't try to slow down their competitors, they run faster and get ahead 
of them.

As for cheap labor in some parts of the world, let's not open that can 
of worms.

> Seems to me that all big business is suspect, but that's the way it 
> seems to work
> and there's probably little that can be done about it, other than mass 
> boycott of
> the product, which is unlikely.

Maybe it should not be so "unlikely".

> They obviously build a quality product that many want to buy, 
> irrespective of the
> fact that it's expensive. Hp have even taken legal action to maintain 
> access to it,
> so what's wrong with that ?. Sounds like the normal successfull us 
> business model
> to me.
> 
> Ok, am playing devil's advocate a bit here :-)...

Do you doubt that Larry's only objective is to hurt HP ???

JF Mezei wrote:
> David Froble wrote:
> 
>> This suggestion of "how much this folly will cost them" really has no merit.
> 
> It is quite important. Because the contract is open ended, HP is able to
> force Oracle to continue to develop for IA64 for as long as HP feels it
> necessary.
> 
> In other words, because of the open ended nature of the contract, there
> is a risk that Oracle will be forced to continue to develop even of it
> looses money due to the shrunken state of the IA64 environment.
> 
> This is a risk/liability that needs to be quantified and reported to
> shareholders.
> 
> If Oracle can get the court to fine tune the wording to provide some
> metrics that end the contract, it can then quantify the potential
> liability and reduce the potential losses in the long term.
> 
> Oracle amy still be making money from the IA64 eco system, but with
> sales drobbing very very fast, it isn't clear how much longer Oracle
> will continue to see IA64 as being profitable.

It might come down to the "cost" of compiling and linking on IA-64.  If 
Oracle doesn't have a common code base, they are more stupid than I can 
imagine.

Why don't you provide details on what Oracle's costs might entail?

On 8/24/2012 9:08 AM, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
> In article <a9pa0gFnsqU1@mid.individual.net>, billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill
> Gunshannon) writes:
>
>> I really don't understand how a court can order a private company to
>> loose money.
>
> Without commenting on the HP-Oracle sandbox spat, in general I don't see
> a problem:  If a company signs a contract and doesn't fulfill it, then
> of course someone can complain in civil court and the court can order
> them to fulfill it, even if they lose money.  Most cases where someone
> doesn't want to fulfill a contract involve losing money, but they
> fulfill it anyway, since the think it is good to honour the contract or
> fear punishment if they don't.
>
> If I sign a contract with a building firm to build a house for a fixed
> price, and the building firm then pulls out because they miscalculated
> something, prices of bricks have gone up or whatever, then of course a
> court can order them to honour the contract, even if they lose money.
>

The court *can* order. . . .
The court can also decline to order. . . .

When things turn to sh*t and the courts get involved, only the lawyers
get rich!  Try very hard to avoid getting involved such circumstances!

On 2012-08-24, David Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>
> Apple isn't the only game in town, and for a while things seemed pretty 
> bleak for them.  They turned it around with hard work, good ideas, and 
> such.  This is good.  But can you tell me one thing Apple sells that 
> cannot be had elsewhere?  Apple provides the better mouse trap, they 
                                                                  ^^^^
> don't try to slow down their competitors, they run faster and get ahead 
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

What about the patent lawsuits on obvious features they have launched ?

> of them.
>

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2012-08-24, David Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>> Apple isn't the only game in town, and for a while things seemed pretty 
>> bleak for them.  They turned it around with hard work, good ideas, and 
>> such.  This is good.  But can you tell me one thing Apple sells that 
>> cannot be had elsewhere?  Apple provides the better mouse trap, they 
>                                                                   ^^^^
>> don't try to slow down their competitors, they run faster and get ahead 
>   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> What about the patent lawsuits on obvious features they have launched ?
> 
>> of them.
>>
> 
> Simon.
> 

If they have truly developed something new they deserve the rewards.

That said, I think there are too many patent applications for software. 
  I doubt there are really things so different that there aren't 
previous uses.

Remember, we had to be better in the past.  Now we just go along with 
bloatware ...

David Froble wrote:

> Do you doubt that Larry's only objective is to hurt HP ???

If he sees HP as a competitor, then he will try to win customers from a
competitor.

Ellison saw that HP was lying to customers about IA64 and tried to
capitalise on that.

I don't know whwther this was a well thought out strategy or a knee jerk
emotional reaction without really checking with the legal dept about any
outstanding contracts.

David Froble wrote:

> Why don't you provide details on what Oracle's costs might entail?

It isn't just "compiling". It is also a question of doing the quality
assurance, testing etc. It means dedicated staff, having and running HP
hardware and maintaining the software, possibly multiple instances with
different versions etc etc.

You also need to consider documentation as well as keeping staff for
development and support who are trained/knoledgeable on HP-UX.

Based on the contract, HP could force Oracle to continue to produce
Oracle for IA64 after HP itself has announced EOL for HP-UX and/or IA64
since the contract is open ended and the court judged that Oracle could
not unilaterallly terminate the contract without HP's approval.

JF Mezei schrieb:
> David Froble wrote:
> 
> 
>>Do you doubt that Larry's only objective is to hurt HP ???
> 
> 
> If he sees HP as a competitor, then he will try to win customers from a
> competitor.
> 
> Ellison saw that HP was lying to customers about IA64 and tried to
> capitalise on that.
> 
> I don't know whwther this was a well thought out strategy or a knee jerk
> emotional reaction without really checking with the legal dept about any
> outstanding contracts.

Ellison's original mistake might have been to sign a contract which
allows another entity (in that case HP) to dictate Oracle's product
strategy. No sane CEO would do that, and if so, he would get fired.

But I'm not fully convinced this is really the case, or just
this particular judge's interpretation.

On 8/22/2012 3:25 PM, Keith Parris wrote:
> Oracle has filed its objection to the court's Proposed Statement of
> Decision:
> http://www.scefiling.org/filingdocs/14198/53924/endorse_86221_OraclexsxObjectionsxtoxCourtxsxProposedxSOD.pdf

And HP has filed its response to Oracle's objections: 
http://www.scefiling.org/filingdocs/14200/54286/86808_HPxxxResponsextoxOraclexsxObjectionsx8.pdf

> And I found this piece very interesting:
>
> "Oracle also objects to and requests clarification and findings
> regarding the Court�s reference to �HP�s Itanium-based server platforms�
> in paragraphs 2-5, in that it is unclear what the Court means by that
> term, specifically as to the operating systems covered."
>
> As Oracle doesn't run on NonStop, and Windows and Red Hat Linux already
> dropped support, OpenVMS (and maybe SuSE Linux, which still supports
> Itanium, but of course isn't an HP operating system) seem to be the only
> other Itanium operating systems conceivably involved (other than HP-UX,
> of course). Is Oracle here trying to weasel out of any obligation to
> continue porting Oracle Server (and developing Oracle Rdb) for OpenVMS
> on Itanium?

HP's legal team had the correct answer to this, IMO:

�Oracle objects that the term �HP�s Itanium-based server platforms� in 
the Court�s order is �unclear� because it does not specify the 
�operating systems covered.� But Oracle knows precisely which 
Itanium-based servers are covered, including the operating systems at 
issue, because the Court�s Order specifies that Oracle�s obligations 
extend only to those software products that were offered on 
Itanium-based servers when the Agreement was signed on September 20, 
2010. Oracle�s software products are designed and offered for specific 
hardware platforms (in this case, Itanium) and specific operating 
systems (in this case, primarily HP-UX but also OpenVMS and NonStop 
depending on the software product). So Oracle knows exactly which 
Itanium-based servers are covered by the Court�s Order by referring to 
those Itanium-based server platforms to which it was porting on 
September 20, 2010.�

So HP's legal team is looking out for OpenVMS (and NonStop) as well as 
HP-UX.

In article <k1dit0$r86$1@usenet01.boi.hp.com>,
	Keith Parris <keithparris_deletethis@yahoo.com> writes:
> On 8/22/2012 3:25 PM, Keith Parris wrote:
>> Oracle has filed its objection to the court's Proposed Statement of
>> Decision:
>> http://www.scefiling.org/filingdocs/14198/53924/endorse_86221_OraclexsxObjectionsxtoxCourtxsxProposedxSOD.pdf
> 
> And HP has filed its response to Oracle's objections: 
> http://www.scefiling.org/filingdocs/14200/54286/86808_HPxxxResponsextoxOraclexsxObjectionsx8.pdf
> 
>> And I found this piece very interesting:
>>
>> "Oracle also objects to and requests clarification and findings
>> regarding the Court�s reference to �HP�s Itanium-based server platforms�
>> in paragraphs 2-5, in that it is unclear what the Court means by that
>> term, specifically as to the operating systems covered."
>>
>> As Oracle doesn't run on NonStop, and Windows and Red Hat Linux already
>> dropped support, OpenVMS (and maybe SuSE Linux, which still supports
>> Itanium, but of course isn't an HP operating system) seem to be the only
>> other Itanium operating systems conceivably involved (other than HP-UX,
>> of course). Is Oracle here trying to weasel out of any obligation to
>> continue porting Oracle Server (and developing Oracle Rdb) for OpenVMS
>> on Itanium?
> 
> HP's legal team had the correct answer to this, IMO:
> 
> �Oracle objects that the term �HP�s Itanium-based server platforms� in 
> the Court�s order is �unclear� because it does not specify the 
> �operating systems covered.� But Oracle knows precisely which 
> Itanium-based servers are covered, including the operating systems at 
> issue, because the Court�s Order specifies that Oracle�s obligations 
> extend only to those software products that were offered on 
> Itanium-based servers when the Agreement was signed on September 20, 
> 2010. Oracle�s software products are designed and offered for specific 
> hardware platforms (in this case, Itanium) and specific operating 
> systems (in this case, primarily HP-UX but also OpenVMS and NonStop 
> depending on the software product). So Oracle knows exactly which 
> Itanium-based servers are covered by the Court�s Order by referring to 
> those Itanium-based server platforms to which it was porting on 
> September 20, 2010.�
> 
> So HP's legal team is looking out for OpenVMS (and NonStop) as well as 
> HP-UX.

An interesting conclusion from people who think Oracle's only interest
was to harm HP.  The way I see it is that HP might just as well want to
force Oracle to waste money developing for platforms that will never offer
a suitable ROI in an attempt to harm them.

Personally, I think Oracle's only real interest is in making money.  I
see very little liklihood of that supporting Itanium.

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999@cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>   

On 8/22/2012 3:25 PM, Keith Parris wrote:
> Oracle has filed its objection to the court's Proposed Statement of
> Decision:
> http://www.scefiling.org/filingdocs/14198/53924/endorse_86221_OraclexsxObjectionsxtoxCourtxsxProposedxSOD.pdf

The Joint Final Pre-Trial Conference Statement has also now been 
released: http://www.scefiling.org/document/servlink.jsp?filedocId=86807

Phase 1 of the trial determined that there was indeed a contract between 
HP and Oracle. Phase 2 is a jury trial to determine if Oracle breached 
that contract, and if so, what damages and remedies HP is entitled to.

HP wishes to proceed immediately to Phase 2 of the trial, and believes 
the trail will last about 3 weeks. Oracle wants to have Phase 2 
suspended pending an appeal.

HP customers can keep up with the latest developments at 
http://hp.com/go/hporaclecustomersfirst

On 8/24/2012 11:54 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
> Ellison saw that HP was lying to customers about IA64 and tried to
> capitalise on that.

For Phase 2 of the trial, among the questions HP is asking be decided 
are (from the Joint Pre-Trial Conference Statement at 
http://www.scefiling.org/filingdocs/14200/54285/86807_JointxPTCxStatementxPhasex4.pdf):

"Defamation

� Were any of Oracle�s statements, that HP was not being truthful with 
its customers and that Itanium was approaching the end of its life, 
false and did Oracle know that such statements were false or have 
serious doubts about whether they were true?
� Did Oracle make the statements at issue to third parties, who 
reasonably would understand these statements to mean that HP was not 
being truthful with its customers or that Itanium was approaching the 
end of its life?
� Was HP harmed by the Oracle statements at issue and, if so, what would 
reasonably compensate HP for this harm?
� Did Oracle act with malice, oppression or fraud in making the 
statements at issue?"

I'm interested in seeing if the court chooses to address these questions 
in Phase 2, and the answers it finds.

Keith Parris wrote:

> HP's legal team had the correct answer to this, IMO:

Would HP object to amending the 2010 contract to include specific
mention of which Oracle products on which HP operating system on Itanium
are covered ? At the end of the day, vague contracts are not very good.


And HP's statement is interesting because it would get Oracle off the
hook for new products.

In article <a9v1mtFhb0U1@mid.individual.net>, billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
>In article <k1dit0$r86$1@usenet01.boi.hp.com>,
>	Keith Parris <keithparris_deletethis@yahoo.com> writes:
>> On 8/22/2012 3:25 PM, Keith Parris wrote:
>>> Oracle has filed its objection to the court's Proposed Statement of
>>> Decision:
>>> http://www.scefiling.org/filingdocs/14198/53924/endorse_86221_OraclexsxObjectionsxtoxCourtxsxProposedxSOD.pdf
>> 
>> And HP has filed its response to Oracle's objections: 
>> http://www.scefiling.org/filingdocs/14200/54286/86808_HPxxxResponsextoxOraclexsxObjectionsx8.pdf
>> 
>>> And I found this piece very interesting:
>>>
>>> "Oracle also objects to and requests clarification and findings
>>> regarding the Court�s reference to �HP�s Itanium-based server platforms�
>>> in paragraphs 2-5, in that it is unclear what the Court means by that
>>> term, specifically as to the operating systems covered."
>>>
>>> As Oracle doesn't run on NonStop, and Windows and Red Hat Linux already
>>> dropped support, OpenVMS (and maybe SuSE Linux, which still supports
>>> Itanium, but of course isn't an HP operating system) seem to be the only
>>> other Itanium operating systems conceivably involved (other than HP-UX,
>>> of course). Is Oracle here trying to weasel out of any obligation to
>>> continue porting Oracle Server (and developing Oracle Rdb) for OpenVMS
>>> on Itanium?
>> 
>> HP's legal team had the correct answer to this, IMO:
>> 
>> �Oracle objects that the term �HP�s Itanium-based server platforms� in 
>> the Court�s order is �unclear� because it does not specify the 
>> �operating systems covered.� But Oracle knows precisely which 
>> Itanium-based servers are covered, including the operating systems at 
>> issue, because the Court�s Order specifies that Oracle�s obligations 
>> extend only to those software products that were offered on 
>> Itanium-based servers when the Agreement was signed on September 20, 
>> 2010. Oracle�s software products are designed and offered for specific 
>> hardware platforms (in this case, Itanium) and specific operating 
>> systems (in this case, primarily HP-UX but also OpenVMS and NonStop 
>> depending on the software product). So Oracle knows exactly which 
>> Itanium-based servers are covered by the Court�s Order by referring to 
>> those Itanium-based server platforms to which it was porting on 
>> September 20, 2010.�
>> 
>> So HP's legal team is looking out for OpenVMS (and NonStop) as well as 
>> HP-UX.
>
>An interesting conclusion from people who think Oracle's only interest
>was to harm HP.  The way I see it is that HP might just as well want to
>force Oracle to waste money developing for platforms that will never offer
>a suitable ROI in an attempt to harm them.

???  Considering the usurious licensing fees for Oracle's products, I fail
to see how they can not make a "return on" any "investment."



>Personally, I think Oracle's only real interest is in making money.  I
>see very little liklihood of that supporting Itanium.

Oracle already has/had their products running on Itanium.  Other than a
build for these platforms with the latest changes incorporated, I really
can't see how Oracle would NOT make money.

Considering that there are other fish in the see willing to pony up to
Itanium -- and specifically, VMS -- to provide a database (Mimer comes
to mind here),  Oracle would be handing *their* money to these others.

-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:

> Oracle already has/had their products running on Itanium.  Other than a
> build for these platforms with the latest changes incorporated, I really
> can't see how Oracle would NOT make money.

With BCS numbers having gone down sigificantly (though a big improvement
in last quarter, they only dropped 16% whereas previous quarters, the
drop was above 30%)  any ISV has to consider an exit strategy,
especially when HP already has its exit strategy announced (Project Odyssey)

HP refuses to provide info on the timing of its exit strategy. So Oracle
precipitated the process, hoping it would force HP to fess up and admit
its exit strategy for the iA64 ecosystem.

While Whitman confirmed that there was nothing that could be done to
rescue the old BCS and that HP was pinning its hopes on Odyssey,  HP has
managed to avoid giving any timelines since it doesn't want to
accelerate the churn on the legacy BCS side.

Consider that Oracle learned that HP expected its customers to become
aware of the end of IA64 in 2012. So Oracle would see a fast decline of
revenues from that point on. By prematurely widthdrawing from IA64,
Oracle managed to hurt HP and probaby forced HP to changed its OEL
plans/timing because it can't announce now that it is killing IA64 since
it would affect the outcome of that trial.

Again, we don't know if Ellison had a emotional knee jerk reaction or
whether this is part of a well thought out strategy. Ellison seems very
capable of a very smart strategy when in the right starte of mind. But
also seems capable of emotional knee jerk reaction.

Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> An interesting conclusion from people who think Oracle's only interest
> was to harm HP.  The way I see it is that HP might just as well want to
> force Oracle to waste money developing for platforms that will never offer
> a suitable ROI in an attempt to harm them.

What is the motive?  Why would HP want to do so?  Without some 
reasonable reason, to which you do not speculate, let alone come up with 
facts, the only term I can come up with is "smokescreen".  (I'm sure 
there are better terms.)

David Froble wrote:

> What is the motive?  Why would HP want to do so? 

here is my theory:

HP's whole strategy hinges on keeping its true plans for IA64 secret to
delay the need to formally announce the EOL as long as possible. It
knows that once  the EOL is known to customers, the churn rate will grow
and BCS revenues dry up.

Its actions are all designed to avoid customers learning about the EOL
plans.

Cue Hurd (who knows everything) getting hired by Oracle. HP gets nervous
that Oracle will make the EOL public and ruin HP's plans. So HP gets an
agreement on paper for Oracle to continue to develop for IA64 to give
the illusion that IA64 has long life ahead.

But Oracle decides to ignore the agreement and annoucne its EOL Which
gets HP mighty mad. And in court, it gets worse because Oracle produces
the evidence that HP has planned the EOL of IA64 a lpng time a go but
won't tell customers.

So HP gets the court to order Oracle to restart development for IA64.
But  the word on the EOL is still out. Cat is out of the bag.

What will be interesting is that piece of evidence from Oracle about HP
having expected customers to learn about EOL in 2012.

So if HP had planned for the EOL to become public by 2012, the amount of
damages done by Oracle releasing that evidence in early 2012 in court
documents wouldn't be that great.