Oracle Sues Companies It Says Provide Solaris OS Support In Illegal Manner

alphadogg writes "Oracle is continuing to crack down on companies it claims are providing support services for its products in an illegal fashion. Last week, Oracle sued IT services providers Terix and Maintech, alleging they have 'engaged in a deliberate scheme to misappropriate and distribute copyrighted, proprietary Oracle software code' in the course of providing support for customers using Oracle's Solaris OS. Oracle's allegations are similar to ones it has made in lawsuits against other Solaris service providers, such as ServiceKey, as well as Rimini Street, which provides third-party support for Oracle and SAP applications."

Oracle claims the defendants are distrib new versi

[raymorris]

If I'm reading that right, Oracle clams that:
Oracle provides updated software versions for a yearly fee.
Defendants are unlawfully distributing the updated versions to people who haven't paid the fee.

If I'm reading that right, Oracle is being slightly non-generous by having annual payments to get updates. That's understandable, though, it costs them money to keep making new updates.

I see nothing in TFA about Oracle objecting to services the defendants provide, just and objection to them distributing new updates that haven't been paid for. So the headline is a load of bull, right?

Re:New business model

[mysidia]

Post patches and upgrades to a public/semi public website behind a "user agreement." Sue anyone who downloads them in the act of providing third party support to customers who actually do have the right to use the patches and upgrades.

That doesn't work. All the service provider has to do is get their customer to sign a "letter of agency"; authorizing the service provider to act on the customer's behalf to download assets and administer the updates/patches, pursuant to their customer's entitlements.

Re:Oracle claims the defendants are distrib new ve

[Anonymous Coward]

The "software" I wanted to download (SUNWhd) hasn't been updated since 04-Nov-2011. Its a small utility to "map" drives to their slots and offline drives.
So, where is this "testing, building, etc" costs come from, storage space on their download servers?
When they sold the gear (new) it was fairly pricey and people paid a small fortune for the maintenance.
All things considered i cant see why they would "guard" this so much.

Re:Slowaris Delenda Est

[whoever57]

Sorry Mr. Business Owner, that IT guy you hired to run your servers is downloading our free updates, and installing them on your servers violating our copyright...

Except that the updates are probably not free. IIRC correctly, Sun was charging for updates a few years before the Oracle acquisition.