Oracle sues SAP for allegedly behaving like it has toward Linux

Having spent a few years in law school, I’m not a big fan of lawsuits. Or legal maneuvering, generally, that replaces head to head product competition.

So it should come as no surprise that my gut reaction to Oracle’s lawsuit against SAP is, “What a waste.”

My second reaction was, “My, but Oracle is cheeky to launch this lawsuit so soon after its (apparently failing) attempts to pilfer Red Hat’s support revenues.” Read this section of Oracle’s complaint:

Oracle brings this lawsuit after discovering that SAP is engaged in systematic, illegal access to – and taking from – Oracle’s computerized customer support systems. Through this scheme, SAP has stolen thousands of proprietary, copyrighted software products and other confidential materials that Oracle developed to service its own support customers. SAP gained repeated and unauthorized access, in many cases by use of pretextual customer log-in credentials, to Oracle’s proprietary, password-protected customer support website. From that website, SAP has copied and swept thousands of Oracle software products and other proprietary and confidential materials onto its own servers. As a result, SAP has compiled an illegal library of Oracle’s copyrighted software code and other materials. This storehouse of stolen Oracle intellectual property enables SAP to offer cut rate support services to customers who use Oracle software, and to attempt to lure them to SAP’s applications software platform and away from Oracle’s.

Now replace “SAP” with “Oracle,” and “Oracle” with “Red Hat,” and “illegal” with “legal but gauche,” and you’ll get a rough picture of what Oracle has attempted to do with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Rather than build up its own distribution, Oracle has opted to piggyback on Red Hat’s labor and brand. What it’s doing is not illegal – the key difference, perhaps, between what it alleges of SAP and what Oracle has done to Red Hat – but it’s still humorous to see this Oracle pot calling the SAP kettle “black.”

Yes, stealing is wrong. But I guess I’m old-fashioned and view stealing in a much broader light than Oracle. There’s what the law (or an open source license) allows you to do, and then there’s what you should do. Normative law, we’ll call it. I’m not suggesting that SAP should be allowed to take Oracle’s copyrighted information and build a business from it. Not at all. But I’m also not hugely sympathetic to Oracle being the one whining about it, given its past.

Again, I’m not saying that the two actions (SAP allegedly against Oracle, and Oracle against Red Hat) are equivalent. They’re not. One is expressly condemned by copyright law and the other is expressly permitted by copyleft law (if you will). I just find it ironic that Oracle is the one suggesting that someone is building a support business on the back of its labor. Imagine that.

Here is what others are saying:

• From the horse’s mouth…here’s Oracle’s press announcement about the suit.
Nick Carr has yet to weigh into it in the way I’ve come to enjoy, but he points to some interesting sources (including the 43-page lawsuit filing itself).
• Josh Greenbaum has this interesting take:

  Today’s announcement that Oracle is suing SAP for allegedly using its TomorrowNow subsidiary to steal software code and other nasties highlights the effectiveness with which TomorrowNow is hitting Oracle where it hurts: right in the old maintenance fee. The lawsuit claims that SAP systematically stole software as part of a concerted effort to beat Oracle, etc. etc. But the real story is that TomorrowNow, which goes around taking over maintenance contracts from PeopleSoft, JDE, and Siebel customers — at 50 cents to the Oracle dollar — has finally gotten under Oracle’s skin. Not surprising: cutting maintenance in half can save hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars a year for the company that’s not buying into Oracle’s Applications Unlimited or Fusion Applications strategy. And, with the lawsuit as a barometer of TomorrowNow’s effectiveness, they must be doing a helluva job.

• Slashdot points out that at least some of the lawsuit stems from SAP allegedly borrowing support information from Oracle’s public support site:

  Oracle has filed a lawsuit against SAP. Among the claims made against SAP are violations of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, Unfair Competition, Intentional and Negligent Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage and Civil Conspiracy. From the actual complaint: ‘SAP has stolen thousands of proprietary, copyrighted software products and other confidential materials that Oracle developed to service its own support customers. SAP gained repeated and unauthorized access, in many cases by use of pretextual customer log-in credentials, to Oracle’s proprietary, password-protected customer support website.

• Dave Kellogg of Mark Logic has more insight into the maintenance revenue war.

Interesting times, and particularly interesting since Oracle, the company that is basically trying to freeride on Red Hat in its move into Linux and “competing” by offering better support, is here crying foul on someone else for…freeriding on its documentation and what not so that it can offer better support. Not the same, of course, but ironic enough to bring a smile to my face. Oracle is nothing else if not cheeky.