Six Years Later, HPE and Oracle Quietly Shut Door On Solaris Lawsuit (theregister.com) 10
HPE and Oracle have settled their long-running legal case over alleged copyright infringement regarding Solaris software updates for HPE customers, but it looks like the nature of the settlement is going to remain under wraps. The Register reports: The pair this week informed [PDF] the judge overseeing the case that they'd reached a mutual settlement and asked for the case to be dismissed "with prejudice" -- ie, permanently. The settlement agreement is confidential, and its terms won't be made public. The case goes back to at least 2016, when Oracle filed a lawsuit against HPE over the rights to support the Solaris operating system. HPE and a third company, software support outfit Terix, were accused of offering Solaris support for customers while the latter was not an authorized Oracle partner.
Big Red's complaint claimed HPE had falsely represented to customers that it and Terix could lawfully provide Solaris Updates and other support services at a lower cost than Oracle, and that the two had worked together to provide customers with access to such updates. The suit against HPE was thrown out of court in 2019, but revived in 2021 when a judge denied HPE's motion for a summary judgement in the case. Terix settled its case in 2015 for roughly $58 million. Last year, the case went to court and in June a jury found HPE guilty of providing customers with Solaris software updates without Oracle's permission, awarding the latter $30 million for copyright infringement.
But that wasn't the end of the matter, because HPE was back a couple of months later to appeal the verdict, claiming the complaint by Oracle that it had directly infringed copyrights with regard to Solaris were not backed by sufficient evidence. This hinged on HPE claiming that Oracle had failed to prove that any of the patches and updates in question were actually protected by copyright, but also that Oracle could not prove HPE had any control over Terix in its purported infringement activities. Oracle for its part filed a motion asking the court for a permanent injunction against HPE to prevent it copying or distributing the Solaris software, firmware or support materials, except as allowed by Oracle. Now it appears that the two companies have come to some mutually acceptable out-of-court arrangement, as often happens in acrimonious and long-running legal disputes.
Big Red's complaint claimed HPE had falsely represented to customers that it and Terix could lawfully provide Solaris Updates and other support services at a lower cost than Oracle, and that the two had worked together to provide customers with access to such updates. The suit against HPE was thrown out of court in 2019, but revived in 2021 when a judge denied HPE's motion for a summary judgement in the case. Terix settled its case in 2015 for roughly $58 million. Last year, the case went to court and in June a jury found HPE guilty of providing customers with Solaris software updates without Oracle's permission, awarding the latter $30 million for copyright infringement.
But that wasn't the end of the matter, because HPE was back a couple of months later to appeal the verdict, claiming the complaint by Oracle that it had directly infringed copyrights with regard to Solaris were not backed by sufficient evidence. This hinged on HPE claiming that Oracle had failed to prove that any of the patches and updates in question were actually protected by copyright, but also that Oracle could not prove HPE had any control over Terix in its purported infringement activities. Oracle for its part filed a motion asking the court for a permanent injunction against HPE to prevent it copying or distributing the Solaris software, firmware or support materials, except as allowed by Oracle. Now it appears that the two companies have come to some mutually acceptable out-of-court arrangement, as often happens in acrimonious and long-running legal disputes.
Last profit point of an OS (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Are lawsuits a symptom of the last gasps of a once-excellent OS?
No, that was moving to System V
Re:Last profit point of an OS (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you not familiar with the history, SunOS 1.x ... 4.x was an early UNIX OS from Sun Microsystems, based on BSD but adding some SVR4 intertask messaging in the later 4.x versions.
Forr 5.x they replaced the code base with one built mainly on SVR4 and rebranded it Solaris (with some retcon labeling of SunOS versions as Solaris, too.)
System V (SysV) was a proprietary multivendor (mainly AT&T) reiplementation of the kernel, OS support apps, and part of the API of UNIX, with a few alleged improvements. This occurred shortly after the extension of copyright to software (1980) and about coincident with the extension of patent (1984). Some observers have claimed the real reason for SysV was that AT&T's claim to ownership of Unix might be unenforceable for a couple reasons and this was an attempt to migrate users to a successor with solid proprietary status.
Unfortunately for its proponents, early SysV had some performance issues - especially around interprocess signaling and communication, especially w.r.t. sockets, which were fundamental to networking development, so large parts of the LINUX community didn't migrate - but did (and still do) ridicule SysV.
UNIX, not LINUX community, darn it! (Score:2)
... so large parts of the LINUX community didn't migrate - but did (and still do) ridicule SysV.
Argh! That should have been "... large parts of the UNIX community ..." of course.
Once in every week, braino in every brain. B-b
Re: (Score:1)
Are lawsuits a symptom of the last gasps of a once-excellent OS?
No, that was moving to System V
:%s/ V/D/g
Re: (Score:2)
Never fear; illumos is here! [illumos.org]
What is wrong about Government Procurement? (Score:2)
The irony (Score:2)
I threw a team of Oracle Linux sales people out of my office yesterday for trying to do exactly the same kind of thing.
Never mind that they already burned any bridges with their ruthless java license audits. Oracle has joined the likes of SCO in the linux hall of infamy.
On the plus side, one could argue that their business and license practices have been driving innovation in the IT world as they force professionals to seek creative and alternative solutions to their draconian terms.
Oracle killed solaris anyway.. (Score:1)
So there's no point in trying to milk others anymore.