

Oracle Responds to HP Lawsuit - wazoox
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/170699

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markstansbury
I'm not sure that I understand why this lawsuit is vindictive. HP fires its
CEO and a week later the guy is working for their direct competitor? Yeah;
that's going to result in a lawsuit one-hundred percent of the time.

You think Hurd might know a few HP secrets? But I bet Oracle just wants him
because he's such a darned hard worker.

~~~
turtle4
To be fair:

If he were capable of leading one giant tech company, he is a candidate to run
another.

HP stock went up something like 130% the first couple years he was there, and
tracked better than the nasdaq for the rest of his time there.

If Oracle feels like he has learned his lesson or if someone there (Larry)
thinks he can make it clear that certain things can't be brought along to the
new job (excessive spending, harassment), then he could be an excellent
candidate, completely separate from any trade secrets.

I'm not saying what he might know doesn't play a role in the hire, but your
post seems to indicate there is no way it could be considered a merit-based
only, and I'm not sure that is the case.

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Hoff
Stock prices, agency ratings, and short-term versus long-term, the efficacy of
tranches, credit and collateral paper, and various other metrics have all been
found, um, somewhat unreliable in recent years.

Most anywhere outside of what you do know about your stock or bond purchases,
you're betting as much on who you're listening to for your decision as with
what paper you're buying.

Historically, more than a few offerings have had stellar and increasing prices
right up to the implosion.

This in general terms, and without intending any implications toward the
recent nor future stock prices or success of either HP or Oracle.

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Keyframe
Real popcorn material here. On one hand I like HP and their products, on the
other hand - if there is a major fallout between these two companies, there is
a chance Oracle might resurrect Sun within its ranks for hardware
manufacturing. Maybe that was a plan? Who knows. Interesting nonetheless.

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sachinag
HP's board had to know that this was going to end up like this. Hate on Oracle
if you must, but in a deathmatch for business dollars, HP will get destroyed.

That said - if HP is really going to be a consumer-focused company (like
Apple), a deathmatch fight with Oracle might actually encourage and expedite
that transition.

~~~
spinchange
It seems like HP's board made a horrible miscalculation with this whole
situation (going back to Hurd's firing). All of this is essentially brought on
by the board's decision to take the advice of a PR firm and let go of their
best performing CEO in ages over expense reports. It's still unbelievable to
me.

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spinchange
Ellison to HP board: "Go ahead, make my day."

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ergo98
Larry Ellison is an amazingly unprofessional titan of industry. He seems to
have no bounds or restraints on how he uses his shareholder's company for his
own personal missions.

Really, threatening the entire HP relationship because you want to hire a
friend against all logical advice?

Absolutely extraordinary and unprecedented.

~~~
rbanffy
> Absolutely extraordinary and unprecedented.

Hardly surprising coming from Ellison. He has always been one of the most
entertaining CEOs in this industry. I liked Scott McNeally better, but, sadly,
his company became part of Oracle... Ballmer is entertaining too, but only in
an embarrassing way.

When Oracle acquired Sun they became direct competitors with IBM and HP. Bot
IBM and HP's Unix offerings seem targeted towards legacy customers that are
looking into alternatives to migrate to, even if it's Solaris on SPARC. It
makes sense to hire Hurd and it makes less sense not to hire him in order to
preserve your relationship with your competitor. What's HP going to do? Help
Oracle on HP/UX users move to MySQL? To Windows and SQL Server? IBM, at least,
can help Oracle users migrate to DB2, but HP is completely toothless.

~~~
nkassis
PostgreSQL :)

~~~
rbanffy
Or Enterprise DB, if you really want to be able to define columns as
VARCHAR2...

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nuclear_eclipse
Replace Oracle with Google, and HP with Oracle, and it still makes sense. Pot,
meet Kettle.

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known
It is better to vertically breakup big corporations into smaller entities to
solve unemployment crisis and promote competition.

