Bias
Look it up in the dictionary The Register.
In a final act of ritual humiliation, SAP has been ordered to pay Oracle $1.3bn over stolen intellectual property. A US court has told the world's largest business software company to pay up after Oracle had sought damages for theft of its IP by defunct SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow. Oracle had been gunning for $1.7bn in damages …
Larry Ellison has a problem. Bill Gates is the smartest and richest but Larry thinks he can be the smartest if he becomes the richest...wrong.
Larry is Evil, Oracle has customers over a barrel, Oracle is the evil empire.
Steve Jobs may be Larry's best friend, but Larry is not Steve's best friend.
Larry is nothing more than a puppet for the Kat who is the real brains at Oracle.
Just looking at the comments and they seem to be more on the side of SAP than Oracle.
Lets be quite clear - a subsidiary of SAPs, with the complete knowledge of the SAP board committed an act that if it had been done to them, would have had SAP screaming for retribution; and I suspect they would have demanded at least the same level of compensation as has been awarded to Oracle.
As individuals, if any of the commentards had done the same thing, they would most likely be threatened with a custodial sentence as well as a hefty fine. Perhaps they would like to argue the toss with FAST and the BSA?
It doesn't matter how big a company they are, what they did was wrong. Unfortunately for those customers of SAP, you can guarantee that there will be a hike in prices again to pay for it.
Oracle can be a tough company to deal with too, but SAP is a million times worse. This will knock about three years of net profits off their balance sheet if it stands up - just about as long as a badly botched installation (by SAP, we unfortunately let them run the show) has been driving us crazy.