Judge Rules Oracle Must Continue Porting Software To Itanium 109
angry tapir writes "A California court has ordered Oracle to continue porting its software to the Intel Itanium chips used by Hewlett-Packard in a number of its servers. Last year, Oracle, which competes with HP in the hardware market but shares many customers with the vendor, announced it would cease supporting Itanium. HP filed suit in June 2011, maintaining that Oracle was contractually bound to continue supporting Itanium."
Sure it's the Itanic (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free enterprise! (Score:4, Informative)
It is. Unless you haven't freely entered into a contract guaranteeing you won't do it.
Re:Free enterprise! (Score:5, Informative)
This is free enterprise. Oracle and HP entered a contract. Oracle disputed, and the judge said they can't back out of their contract. So there you have it.
Re:Open source impact? (Score:3, Informative)
You miss-read that. The judge pointed out that even when they *didn't* have a contract, they had (for decades) worked together in good faith on huge, and expensive projects. In the face of that past behavior, HP's belief that Oracle would *honor* the terms of a settlement agreement (which is a contract), was beyond reasonable, and Oracle doesn't have a leg to stand on with regard to reneging on that agreement.
Re:Sure it's the Itanic (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not an Oracle Fan (Score:4, Informative)
The Tandems / NonStop servers also use Itaniums.