IBM Breaks Open Source Patent Pledge 359
Jay Maynard writes "IBM has broken the pledge it made in 2005 not to assert 500 patents against open source software. In a letter sent to Roger Bowler, president of TurboHercules SA, IBM's Mark Anzani, head of their mainframe business, claimed that the Hercules open-source emulator (disclaimer: I manage the open source project) infringes on at least 106 issued patents and 67 more applied for. Included in that list are two that it pledged not to assert in 2005. In a blog entry, the NoSoftwarePatents campaign's Florian Mueller said that 'IBM is using patent warfare in order to protect its highly lucrative mainframe monopoly against Free and Open Source Software.' I have to agree: from where I sit, IBM likes Open Source only as long as they don't have to compete with it."
Call the DOJ (Score:5, Interesting)
If IBM is using anti-competitive practices again, then maybe it's time for some external constraint. After all, Microsoft owes it's whole existence to the previous IBM anti-trust ruling, which led to Microsoft's monopoly and IBMs pledge of support for open source.
Hercules is a z/Arch emulator... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, IBM will win because Roger doesn't have the means to fight that type of litigation...
But Hercules is a hardware emulator, w/o IBM software. I didn't read the article (this is /. after all), but can they do anything about a re-implementation of an arch in software? I thought Intel vs Who-Knows, Maybe AMD left some legal baggage on that...
Also, the letter was sent to the company that deals TurboHercules, and not the Hercules team itself. Something to consider as well.
Re:You might not like them ... (Score:5, Interesting)
These are hardware patents, not software patents. What's interesting about this case is we have software violating a hardware patent, as it's emulating what the hardware does. A key word here is "emulating."
Now, I have a hard time thinking that all those patents are really being violated. I've worked with processor emulators before, and the way they actually work is very different from the actual hardware. Many of the patents seem to be hardware-specific, and not what you would actually implement in software. I won't speculate beyond that because I don't know much about the hardware and emulator involved in this case.
Master the Mainframe (Score:5, Interesting)
Strange action to take (Score:3, Interesting)
Hercules is a nice bit of software, but it's very slow. (Supposedly something like 50x slower than the real thing). There's no way I can see that someone would be using Hercules to run their payroll software, and every reason to think that it's mainly used for interop testing. Which is the reason I occasionally use it, to test Red Hat's software on S/390{x]. Foot, meet gun.
Rich.
Re:Wake up and smell the stock market people... (Score:3, Interesting)
You will also notice that these 'pledges' don't do very much in the long run. IBM, Google, Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat and Apple all have 'pledged' some type of protection for their open source ancestors but those things are not legally binding no matter what they might say about it (I think it's MSFT that has such a claim).
That's also why you should avoid implementing any of their proprietary crap in your Open Source project (or any project that's being made public or sold in any shape or form) because if for any reason they want to leverage their arbitrary licenses on it, they can no matter what they have promised whether it's uncanny legal speak or so-called patent pools.
Re:Wake up and smell the stock market people... (Score:3, Interesting)
...ANY publicly traded company will do ANYTHING to ensure the continued success of the company because the management is entirely beholden to the stock holders.
Ha. You actually believe this? Sorry, senior managers can obscure financial results until well after they have collected their paycheck and left the company. Each level of a corporation is 'beholden' to the level above them that has hire/fire authority or who has influence with someone who does. At the top the Board of Directors cannot be fired by the stockholders (except under very extreme conditions) but who may be up for reelection at a general meeting once a year. In practice it is extremely unlikely that a board member will be removed unless a single very large stockholder (usually a corporate takeover type) or a group of large stockholders (pension funds or hedge funds) prepare and campaign with their own money before the meeting.
Board members and senior management choose the direction of companies with non-huge shareholders simply along for the ride until they decide to jump off. They can sell their shares, but they can't really change the company. If the corporation is blatantly steered toward the rocks then someone might interfere, but it is clear most business managers of recently failed companies (AIG, Lehman) were not being operated for the benefit of any shareholders.
Re:Look, IBM is losing it anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
They are usually strong enough to put the government off indefinitely or are willing to pay a small fine to make a large profit.
... or strong to enough to simply fuck off to another country with (*cough*) friendlier laws. I worked for several months in the Swiss canton of Zug. Very interesting place! Just wandering around the streets and looking at the discreet brass nameplates beside the doors of so many office buildings... "World Headquarters of XYZ Corp.", "World Headquarter of ABC Inc.", etc., etc. Those offices all contain exactly 3 people - an office manager, a secretary and a cleaning lady: because Swiss federal law requires that they employ at least 3 Swiss citizens. And that's it!
Let's not get into the Extremely Senior Apartheid Sanctions Busters, the Oil Brokers, Arms Brokers and Zimbabwean Dictators's Benevolent Funds get located in Zug Canton. Can't think why...
Re:Master the Mainframe (Score:5, Interesting)
Couldn't be that a company as large as IBM might have multiple departments/divisions that don't really know what the other is doing.
It's likely yet it absolves them of nothing - you live by the sword, you die by the sword.
Corporations want to be people, remember? So, if they're being an ass, multiple-personality-disorder isn't a defense.
Re:Probably an oversight or NOT FOSS (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually TurboHecules is suing IBM in France under Anti-Trust laws hoping to force IBM to make its software available to all, regardless of where they buy the hardware. If it works TurboHerc's reasoning is that people will flock to their emulator so they can run the IBM software without forking over the cash IBM wants for their hardware.
Does TurboHercules==Hercules? Are TurboHurcules offerings FOSS or is this a closed fork?
From what I can tell, no, TurboHercules simply sells support and services for Hercules. There doesn't seem to be a lot of need for that now though because running IBM's OS on the emulator violates IBM's license.
More info - here [theregister.co.uk].
I wish people could read... (Score:5, Interesting)
If people actually read stuff before the commented, the world would be a lot better.
The letter from IBM is directed at TurboHercules, a commercial enterprise making money off of IBM's IPR. Though we don't see the letter that prompted this, it can be guessed from the letter that TurboHercules said something along the lines "we don't think what we do, because we didn't realise IBM had IPR in this area." Which does seem rather rich, since this commercial enterprise is engaged.
Second the letter doesn't say they are going to enforce these patents, but that they do have US patents in this area. Also they don't appear to be attacking the open source project, but a commercial entity that is making money off of IBM's products.
Re:Probably an oversight or NOT FOSS (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no fork, closed or open source. TurboHercules SA sells support and services for Hercules the open source emulator. There is only one codebase, and only one set of developers. IBM's attack on TurboHercules SA cannot help but attack Hercules the open source project.
Not so fast with the pitchforks (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't have the EULA to read but it smells like TurboHercules is trying to encourage IBMs customers to violate if not the word, at least the spirit of the EULA they agreed to. If that is the case then I am not surprised that IBM broke out every weapon they had and went to war. That's how those boys roll. It makes more sense to make it clear that they aren't going to win right off the bat than it does to go through a SCO style plague of law suites. The two patents are definitely an issue but I am very sure you will see them back down from those shortly. If that happens then until we have more info I don't see a reason to go to war with IBM.
Re:Good Grief. (Score:3, Interesting)
No if that was RMS GPL 4.0 will go out soon where there are modifications where it is worded that it is OK for IBM to do this.
Just like the "TiVoization" exception in the GPL 3.0 where it doesn't say IBM in particularly but words in a way the IBM and a few other companies can safely abide to.
Sorry, but it's software, not hardware (Score:2, Interesting)
IBM mainframe processors (going all the way back to S/370 at least) are micro-coded processors. (I actually still have a box containing a microfiche copy of the microcode for a 370/148). This means that while there is definitely some proprietary hardware executing, the instruction set is 100% implemented in software which runs on the special purpose hardware. In a very real way, the very same instruction set that Hercules emulates, is in reality implemented as an emulator on IBM's hardware.
In any case, I do find IBM's tack here a bit ridiculous. I mean c'mon, what micro-percentage of potential sales are possibly being lost the the Hercules emulator?
I've been a user of Hercules going way back (and A370 before that!). I don't use it for any real work - but I like to occasionally go back and refresh my old skill set (I was an MVS SysProg years ago). Today I spend 98% of my time doing S/D in Java and C# on Unix and Windows, but every once in a while I get called in to do something on a mainframe (and no, it doesn't pay any better than my Java/C# work).
Hercules is by far the most complete S/390 emulator out there and I'm grateful for folks like Jay and Roger (Fish, Volker and the rest of the regulars) who give freely of their efforts and time to allow old farts like me to experience the thrill of bringing up an MVS or VM/370 system on our very own system (something you young whippersnappers probably just can't understand)
Having said that - now get off my lawn!
Re:A lot of people (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What he said. (Score:2, Interesting)
Look, you're being ground up by the wheels of Industry, it's true. But you weren't pushed in there, you inserted yourself deliberately and with great effort. When you find your work being praised by Maureen O'Gara it's time to take a step back and do a little self-evaluation.
I don't approve of software patents, nor the prevention of progress through hardware patents. I'm pretty vocal about this here. But this is not progress. You're not inventing something new. You're only implementing patented hardware in software - and probably poorly since the hardware the software is running on doesn't actually have the features that make the mainframe a valuable platform, the software just lies to the applications about having the features. Presumably this is so mainframe customers can migrate off of expensive mainframes to virtual mainframes running on the emulator, rather than migrating off the hideous proprietary or complex non-portable systems like they should, and so getting the least favorable path: all the lockin of the apps without the RAS of the mainframe or the inherent portability of industry standard architectures. And you intend to profit from their movement from IBM's proprietary platform to your emulation of it and so remaining locked into those hideous applications, or there'd be no company.
So no, you've actually found a strange corner case in all of IP protection that I actually don't care about. Congratulations! I didn't think there was one. Enjoy your time with the Nazgul. Their attention can be quite... memorable.