Yes, as a Brit I was quite surprised about that ;-)
As for the other side, there's not just the issue of who builds for them but who builds with them. If the industry perception of Oracle becomes establised that they're awkward, litigious and have an attitude problem, who's going to buy the licenses and build products against their platform?
[ I'm sure in Larry's eyes "uppity yankee hipsters" and "uppity brit hipsters" are equivalent ;) ]
I don't think they have a reputation for being awkward with their own customers/partners/etc; they're unashamedly merciless with competitors, and this is well known. In the enterprise sector the two categories often overlap, but then again in those circles being a shark is actually considered a good thing anyway.
At the moment their target is squarely HP, like SAP before them, and this is what it means. It's actually mildly amusing, if you've followed the whole saga with Apotheker living on a plane etc.
Was it not Oracle who sued an alternative support provider out of existence on very spurious grounds? That's hardly a customer-friendly action; I can't imagine the support organisation's customers were very well disposed to Oracle after this.
I'm sure they are targeting (who they think are) their competitors. I see and hear good things about their technology. I don't doubt the management culture of some organisations would count it as to their credit that they act 'forcefully'.
But still, there surely has to come a tipping point beyond which aggressive nastiness and cockiness works against, not for them. It's not relevant for me on several grounds but this is one more black mark against Oracle's culture for me that would discourage me from working with them and make me wonder what it'd take for them to do something similar to me.
Support is where Oracle makes the real money, so they're very aggressive there, but I think you're referring to the TomorrowNow case. They were bought by SAP to basically snatch Oracle customers, and "it looks like that TomorrowNow was probably cheating like mad. Instead of going to Oracle's support site and downloading only the patches and bug fixes its customers were entitled to, it downloaded all the Oracle software it could get its hands on. Oracle says TomorrowNow had a whole bank of servers skimming its computers automatically for Oracle software." (see http://www.computerworlduk.com/in-depth/it-business/3246680/... )
The "enterprise" world is full of sharks, Oracle is just one of many.
As for the other side, there's not just the issue of who builds for them but who builds with them. If the industry perception of Oracle becomes establised that they're awkward, litigious and have an attitude problem, who's going to buy the licenses and build products against their platform?