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I would like to point out that Flexcube is built by Oracle. Citi's mistake here was in tying themselves to what is likely the "safest", "market leading" solutio

I would like to point out that Flexcube is built by Oracle. Citi's mistake here was in tying themselves to what is likely the "safest", "market leading" solution. If you all could see how frustrating Ariba (by SAP) is, you'd have a great laugh.

kibwen 6y ago
Does Citibank have a case against Oracle? OSS licenses all have that "this software is not fit for any purpose at all, don't even think about suing us if it goes wrong" clause, which would seem to imply that licensing poorly-made software can be grounds for a lawsuit.
- peeters 6y ago
  > which would seem to imply that poorly-made software can be grounds for a lawsuit. That doesn't necessarily follow, lawyers have a long tradition of including "cover your ass" clauses even if they don't think it's likely that they would be liable without it.
- lostcolony 6y ago
  It could just as easily imply that OSS looked at commercial software and said "holy crap that's a lot of legalese; we better have some of that to make sure we don't get sued, since we don't even get to decide who uses what we put out there"
- tedunangst 6y ago
  Sounds like the software does exactly what the (absurd) specification calls for. Somebody at Citi asked for a "front" knob, and they got one.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  Ha - whatever OSS licences say, when you're dealing with terms written by Oracle lawyers, you're getting even less chances of successfully suing them if it goes wrong. You can argue about their technology, but the legal part of Oracle is quite capable, so much that I would assert that Citibank does not have a case against Oracle no matter what the software did. Pretty much all commercial software contracts includes similar idemnification clauses - they can't include the "not fit for any purpose" but the "if it goes wrong, it's not our problem" part definitely is there; and if it turns out to be not fit for purpose (which is ridiculously unlikely to prove for any actual product that's not totally made-up-nonexistent-fraudulent thing) then you might get back some of what you paid for it, but not for the losses you had due to it failing, assuming the licence/contract wasn't written by incompetent idiots.
phaedryx 6y ago
Ah, Ariba. I am currently getting an email every day from Ariba stating that I need to approve the purchase of my company laptop (that was purchased 3 months ago, currently sitting on my desk). The email also threatens me that if I don't approve the purchase, it will be escalated to my manager. As a lowly software dev I don't have the ability to approve anything in Ariba. Because it is assigned to me, apparently no one else can approve it either.
- lostcolony 6y ago
  The joys of infinite flexibility in workflows - invariably whatever is built for a company, it's wrong.
swiley 6y ago
Who the heck thinks of Oracle as safe? You can get a huge bill from them just for misconfiguring your dev environment.
- EduardoBautista 6y ago
  Large enterprises that are not traditionally tech companies. Selling to large enterprises is more about having a good sales team than a good product.
koyote 6y ago
Of course it's Oracle. We use Oracle for our HR system and it's the single worst piece of software I have ever used (and that includes Windows Me!).

kibwen 6y ago

Does Citibank have a case against Oracle? OSS licenses all have that "this software is not fit for any purpose at all, don't even think about suing us if it goes wrong" clause, which would seem to imply that licensing poorly-made software can be grounds for a lawsuit.

peeters 6y ago
> which would seem to imply that poorly-made software can be grounds for a lawsuit. That doesn't necessarily follow, lawyers have a long tradition of including "cover your ass" clauses even if they don't think it's likely that they would be liable without it.
lostcolony 6y ago
It could just as easily imply that OSS looked at commercial software and said "holy crap that's a lot of legalese; we better have some of that to make sure we don't get sued, since we don't even get to decide who uses what we put out there"
tedunangst 6y ago
Sounds like the software does exactly what the (absurd) specification calls for. Somebody at Citi asked for a "front" knob, and they got one.
PeterisP 6y ago
Ha - whatever OSS licences say, when you're dealing with terms written by Oracle lawyers, you're getting even less chances of successfully suing them if it goes wrong. You can argue about their technology, but the legal part of Oracle is quite capable, so much that I would assert that Citibank does not have a case against Oracle no matter what the software did. Pretty much all commercial software contracts includes similar idemnification clauses - they can't include the "not fit for any purpose" but the "if it goes wrong, it's not our problem" part definitely is there; and if it turns out to be not fit for purpose (which is ridiculously unlikely to prove for any actual product that's not totally made-up-nonexistent-fraudulent thing) then you might get back some of what you paid for it, but not for the losses you had due to it failing, assuming the licence/contract wasn't written by incompetent idiots.

phaedryx 6y ago

Ah, Ariba. I am currently getting an email every day from Ariba stating that I need to approve the purchase of my company laptop (that was purchased 3 months ago, currently sitting on my desk). The email also threatens me that if I don't approve the purchase, it will be escalated to my manager. As a lowly software dev I don't have the ability to approve anything in Ariba. Because it is assigned to me, apparently no one else can approve it either.

lostcolony 6y ago
The joys of infinite flexibility in workflows - invariably whatever is built for a company, it's wrong.

swiley 6y ago

Who the heck thinks of Oracle as safe? You can get a huge bill from them just for misconfiguring your dev environment.

EduardoBautista 6y ago
Large enterprises that are not traditionally tech companies. Selling to large enterprises is more about having a good sales team than a good product.

koyote 6y ago

Of course it's Oracle. We use Oracle for our HR system and it's the single worst piece of software I have ever used (and that includes Windows Me!).