The misrepresentation of the purpose is what brings it into phishing territory. By misrepresenting the purpose, you're also misrepresenting who you are and what your intentions are.

Something that's already phishing will still be phishing even if the purpose is misrepresented. Something that isn't otherwise phishing, however, can be made into something akin to phishing by misrepresenting the purpose.

> The misrepresentation of the purpose

Incorrect. It's not about purpose. It's about misrepresenting who you are. Oracle is saying they are Oracle. If Oracle is pretending to be someone else, than it's phishing.

What you are describing is not phishing. It's just regular old fishing.

> By misrepresenting the purpose, you're also misrepresenting who you are

Wha?

Maybe this got lost halfway down this comment thread, but the whole point of this being considered phishing-like is that Oracle was emailing individual developers, asking questions about their use. The developers didn't realize so that Oracle can build a case against their employer and accidentally gave away details that Oracle would then use to pressure the employer to get licenses or would outright sue.

Developers likely thought they were speaking to Support, or responding to some kind of survey/questionnaire about their use cases and how they use VirtualBox, when in reality were being misled as to the actual purpose of the conversation.

Just because they were speaking to someone from Oracle as opposed to a third party scammer does not mean that the person they were speaking with didn't misrepresent/fake who they were.