The important American computer company Oracle sent letters to its partners in Venezuela, informing them that it will not continue working with them due to the impositions of Executive Order 13,884, issued by US President Donald Trump, which imposes “sanctions” or unilateral coercive measures on Venezuela. This was reported on Thursday by the specialized website Bleeping Computer. Oracle is the largest commercial provider of database software in the world, whose applications are used for massive data management in banks, insurance companies, financial companies, universities and private and public institutions. The sanctions and measures imposed by Trump seek to depose Nicolás Maduro as Venezuelan President.
So far, Oracle has not confirmed the information on its social networks or on its website.
However, the BleepingComputer website states that “Oracle has canceled all contracts with its partners located in Venezuela. According to a source, business partners located in Venezuela have received letters issued by Marcio Silveira, Senior Vice President, General Regional Advisor and Chief of the Oracle Regional Compliance and Ethics Office, informing them that the company can no longer work with them.
BleepingComputer published a capture of the letter, which partly says:
“As you know, the United States government has substantially increased sanctions on Venezuela over the past two years. Most recently, on August 5, 2019, President Trump issued an executive order imposing additional sanctions on the government of Venezuela. As a United States company, Oracle is legally required to adhere to this order.
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“In order to ensure compliance with Executive Order 13884 and related U.S. sanctions targeting Venezuela, and pursuant to Section R of our Master Distribution Agreement of March 14, 2018 and all Addenda thereunder and Section W of the Oracle PartnerNetwork Worldwide Agreement, Oracle must undertake an orderly wind down of its Venezuela business. As part of this process, Oracle must terminate the abovementioned contracts with you and cannot engage in any new business with existing customers or new customers. Accordingly, you must not sell any Oracle services, products, hardware, or software to any new customers or engage in any new business with existing customers.
To the extent there are continuing legal obligations to existing customers, Oracle is assessing the requirements and impacts of applicable U.S. laws and regulations on a case-by-case basis and will follow up with your and/or the customer, if and as appropriate, with additional guidance or instruction.”
BleepingComputer said that its source, which received this letter, is not affiliated “in any way” with the Venezuelan government, which indicates that “sanctions” are not limited only to the Bolivarian government led by Nicolás Maduro. The source also informed them that numerous end users have received the same letter from other suppliers and resellers based in Venezuela.
The BleepingComputer website also noted that, “When we ask Oracle why they are canceling contracts with all partners in Venezuela instead of just those related to the government, we receive the following statement: ‘We will not comment.'”
Brief history
Oracle ranks first in the world database category, and seventh worldwide in information technology companies.
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The company has its precedent in SDL, a company created by engineers Larry Ellison, Ed Oates and Bob Miner in 1977, with which they obtained a contract with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to design a special database Relational system with key code “Oracle”, for handling large amounts of data. The company changed its name to Oracle Corporation in 1984 and had immense success in selling its applications.
In 2019, Larry Ellison, one of the founders of Oracle, is listed by Forbes magazine as the fourth person with more money in the United States and the seventh richest person in the world, with a fortune of 66.1 billion dollars.
Sanctions
The announcement about Oracle comes a few days after the Adobe company, developer and seller of graphic design, audio and video editing applications, made a similar announcement about Venezuela.
Since 2004, the Venezuelan government has issued legal instruments to migrate the Venezuelan State’s technological platform to free software and open standards, which allow public institutions to not be technologically dependent on foreign products and IT companies. Using free software allows the “source code” of all applications to be available, allowing them to be studied, modified and improved, without the need to rely on third parties.
In December 2004, President Hugo Chávez signed Decree 3,390 for the migration to free software in the Venezuelan federal government, and in 2013 the National Assembly approved the Law on Info-government with the same intentions. Both decrees have been complied with in a very partial way, and many institutions of the Venezuelan State have continued to be dependent on applications such as Oracle.
PostgreSQL and MariaDB are two of the free software database managers that can partially or totally replace Oracle products.
This is the letter issued by Oracle that BleepingComputer published.
Translated by JRE/EF
