Logicon first began talking to state officials about signing a broad software licensing agreement in February 2001, Carrier said. Up until a week before the contract was signed on May 31, it was intended to be a deal between Logicon and the state, with Logicon arranging separately with Oracle for licensing. But state officials decided to contract directly with Oracle because they thought that would help them better meet the state's rules for contracts that avoid competitive bidding, Carrier said.
Logicon had been hired by the Department of Information Technology for $93,000 in June 2000 to write a "white paper" analyzing various approaches to buying software licenses on a large scale. The company delivered a draft analysis, but never finalized the paper because the state showed no interest in the draft, said Neil H. O'Donnell, a San Francisco attorney representing Logicon.
Logicon was never paid, and that contract was formally severed in November 2001, he said.
What is the State getting exactly for the millions?
Was there to be an application to be written using Oracle?
Were there already some existing Oracle Data Base applications running?
Looks like there was some incompetency in the technical ranks!