Christof,

I have never worked with Oracle, that is very interesting. I do of know two companies that dumped Oracle after spending over $2M (each/separately); one of them sued and received a settlement of 1/2 a refund. That is the extent of my Oracle knowledge.

It is still different than Microsoft killing a development tool that was used to create products for markets, while at the very same time selling their version of the very same end products to the same markets while everyone has to re-tool.

By the way, it's far worse for other products / companies, for instance Symantec and Microsoft - we just moved to Windows 2008 (in our office) only to find out Symantec is having trouble getting their Anti-Virus Management (and Exchange 2007 integration) product working in 2008, while Microsoft has built in advertising for their Anti-Virus product on their CD and during their installations - perhaps Symantec's bad, but perhaps not? Same thing, Microsoft sells the OS and the Anti-Virus, new OS changes puts the competition (Symantec) behind the ball in keeping up.

There are other examples.

As I said, I am no lawyer, but that seems like unfair competition. I may be wrong. Be well.

Kind regards,
Derek

>>>>>That's a pattern Oracle is using successfully for at least a decade, probably two. You can work with Oracle together on a client project just fine. However, if the niche turns out to be proficient not only for you, your customer suddenly might stop working with you. Later you often find that they have a cheaper contract with Oracle to get the initial application running. Even later you suddenly see Oracle products for that particular niche. Coincidence, of course...