Open Source Complaint Against IBM Gets Support 250
FlorianMueller writes "ZDNet blogger Dana Blankenhorn reports that '[t]he efforts by open source TurboHercules to break IBM's mainframe monopoly through the European Commission got some proprietary support this week when NEON Enterprise Software LLC of Austin, Texas, filed an EU complaint alongside a US antitrust lawsuit.' NEON's founder co-founded BMC, so the company is well-funded for this fight. In comments given to the IDG News Service, IBM claims that NEON's product, which saves mainframe customers money by optimizing the use of coprocessors, 'offers no innovation,' and accuses the 'copycat' of violating IBM's intellectual property. That's basically what IBM also said about the Hercules emulator. The European Commission is expected to take a decision on an investigation in a matter of months. Since IBM lobbies the EC over the Open Document Format, it's now accused of double standards."
oh jeez (Score:4, Informative)
can we not go through this again? it's been debunked [groklaw.net] thoroughly.
This is the fault of Hercules trying to get IBM to license the way Hercules wants, not anything that is IBM's fault.
Re:oh jeez (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks for your post.
Really this has been turned down by both Groklaw and the Linux Foundation.
For those that don't know this is what TurboHercules wants.
IBM sells z/OS which is a closed source OS with a restrictive license that says you can only run it on an IBM zMachine.
TurboHercules wants IBM to allow customers that buy z/OS to run it on the Hercules emulator.
There is nothing involving the GPL or FOSS here at all except that Hercules runs under Linux and is released under the Q license which is FOSS but not GPL compatible.
Now Neon wants to sell a closed source solution that allows you to off load some zMachine processing to co processors which IBM says violated their z/OS license.
This is massive spin of the highest order.
It has nothing to do with FOSS or patents or anything else.
If you do not want to be stuck running IBM hardware I suggest that people migrate their software to Linux on the zMachine and then they can migrate away from the zMachine to any Linux box on the want.
The company TurboHercules is actually spreading FUD because IBM doesn't want to do things their way.
AKA TurboHercules is using the FOSS community for it's own ends and wrapping it's self in the FOSS flag.
Both Groklaw and the Linux Foundation have said that they are spreading FUD.
BTW http://www.hercules-390.org/ [hercules-390.org] is really a cool program. You can get older IBM mainframe OSs and run them on it and you can even run Linux on it if you want your own IBM mainframe to play with.
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IBM is not using the patents to attack Hercules. Hercules is up and available right now. Show me a take down notice or law suite.
Yep IBM wants to make as much money as possible and the Z/OS lock makes them money.
NEON is a way to run Z/OS not on the ZMachine hardware so blame. Also IBM said that it wouldn't use patents to attack FOSS NEON isn't FOSS.
So nope this doesn't effect the FOSS community really at all.
The one thing I would love to see is IBM to release a version of Z/OS for "educational" use. I would
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Hey Mueller you seem to think IBM has to allow more choice on the use of their products. So, I think I deserve more choice also when it comes to the use money. I want the choice to take money out of your bank account to use in a way I see fit. Is that OK with you? Please forward the appropriate info to me so I can do that, OK?
The anti-trust issue has nothing to do with this. Even if IBM WAS convicted of abusing a monopoly position in the mainframe area they would not be required to give away (license)
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TurboHercules SAS is not asking IBM to go to any other license for their software. They're only asking that it be licensed to run on non-IBM hardware, just as they did for decades.
IBM's attack on TurboHercules SAS is a patent attack, and since TurboHercules SAS's code is the open source Hercules emulator, that makes it a patent attack on open source software. What's so hard to understand about this?
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IBM made no such legal claim. They wrote a letter and didn't do anything else. Well, thanks to you and Jim Maynard, Neon is suing them, but it's not going to get anywhere on ethics or legal ground.
This part held as much wa
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I'm Jay. Jim is my dad.
I wish I had that kind of influence on NEON Software. I'd get them to give me a job.
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Do you really think you aren't to blame for this? Honestly? Do you think the world lives in a vacuum, my good sir?
hint: you're going to be at fault in more ways than one, even if you however unlikely, have absolutely zero association with Neon. Jay Maynard/Hercules/Neon are significantly beyond associated now.
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Well, the other vendors that they licensed z/OS to also did this little thing called giving something in return, which Hercules/TurboHercules would just rather ignore. Exactly WHAT do you have to offer IBM? Cross-licenses for patents? License fees? Anything? No, the only thing you are 'offering' IBM is the opportunity to lose business. I can't imaging why they are not interested.
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Just what did Amdahl give IBM in the days when the OS was freely available and in the public domain? IBM got *nothing* from Amdahl until they started patenting features. Now, IBM is not willing to license their patents at all in order to maintain their monopoly position, and tie the sale of their mainframe hardware to licensing of their software product - and that's just plain illegal for a monopolist.
Fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing (Score:2)
Well, the other vendors that they licensed z/OS to also did this little thing called giving something in return, which Hercules/TurboHercules would just rather ignore. Exactly WHAT do you have to offer IBM? Cross-licenses for patents? License fees?
I can't speak for TurboHercules and confirm what they want, but one thing is obvious to me: they filed an antitrust complaint and antitrust law isn't about freebies -- it's about fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing. I'm sure their lawyers told them that if they ask the European Commission for help, a FRAND license is the best possible outcome and a free lunch won't be achievable under the law. They can always ask IBM to add more patents to the pledge (anyone can, including other FOSS projects
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Are you kidding me? TH claimed they didn't even know there were patents until AFTER they filed the complaint. It seems far more likely that they filed the complaint, found out about the patents, and said 'we're screwed'. At that point they decided the best course of action was to get a few easily taken-in people to start a smear campaign against IBM.
I think you are entirely correct that a free lunch won't be achievable, so what FOSS license supports third-party patents?
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You make it hard to respond to your questions. You come up with some speculation and diversion in the first paragraph and then in the second paragraph you ask a question that's unrelated to everything I said.
Of course there's no FOSS license that overrules patent law. But there's a code of ethics in open source. Google's chief lawyer said clearly - when I asked him at a conference two weeks ago - that they think using patents against open source is a bad idea and they won't do it. I've quoted him in this bl [blogspot.com]
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Did you ask Google's lawyer if they would support a direct competitor, who happens to be using an OSS project that infringes Googles patents?
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Read the correspondence. IBM said "you're infringing our IP" in their second letter. TurboHercules SAS merely asked them to be specific in what they were referring to.
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and again, they did not do anything. figuratively, You saw a big minefield, read the "beware of mines" sign, and didn't enter.
This wasn't a policeman throwing you back from the sign, or arresting you, or any legal or other response.
You just flipped the hell out and said oh my god IBM is coming after me I'm scared someone hold me! I don't know where your knowledge is in the corporate world, but if IBM was legitimately concerned (instead of saying this isn't a good idea), they would have done a hell of a lot
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Florian's not attacking the GPL. Neither am I (even though I oppose it on principle, I'm not attacking it).
Nobody's asking IBM to change their license. This is a PJ fabrication from whole cloth.
As for causing IBM a whole lot of stress, all they have to do is say that they will not assert their patents against Hercules. Any of them. That would solve my problem. Why isn't IBM doing that, especially in light of the (deserved, IMAO) bad PR they've gotten? There's just one reason: they are keeping the option ope
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Florian,
It's not an anti-trust situation because the situation you describe is exactly the same as Apple's whole business model which has been upheld with legal precedent. You say IBM doesn't want to make z/OS available for use on non-IBM hardware - that is the same argument Pystar tried with Apple not wanting to make OS X available for use on non-Apple hardware. The courts expediently slapped Pystar down and confirmed that business model is perfectly OK.
The emulator is an entirely different issue. Anyone i
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The main problem is that you and TurboHercules are being entirely unreasonable. You do not only want IBM to license z/OS on other platforms, you want IBM to forget that they invested billions of dollars in the platform, and give the results of all that investment away for free.
Would you be happier if IBM opened the licensing for z/OS (ending the anti-trust claims), then turned around and sued for patent infringement?
I'm not aware of anyone demanding a freebie (Score:2)
The main problem is that you and TurboHercules are being entirely unreasonable.
You can compare what the TurboHercules company says to what I say, but I want to make it clear that it's not necessarily the same. I view a lot of issues here the way they do, but not all of them, and vice versa I guess.
You do not only want IBM to license z/OS on other platforms
I think a company in a dominant market position should be required to do so. I believe that TurboHercules also thinks so, which is why they filed their antitrust complaint after trying unsuccessfully for a long time to enter into negotiations with IBM. They wrote their first letter to IBM in
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"No one forgets that, and no one wants IBM to forget it. And most importantly, no one demands anything for free" Oh really? Is there an alternate explanation for this statement in the second letter to IBM?
"In the unlikely event that IBM believes that the Hercules open source project infringes any IBM intellectual property, we kindly ask you too add any such property to the portfolio of patents that IBM has already pledged for the free use of the open source community".
That statement seems
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Your possibility 1 is the end result any opponent of monopolistic abuses and software patents should be arguing for. You're wrong, though, in that IBM does indeed have something to gain - software licensing revenues with no additional work, as well as even more good PR in the open source community - and nothing to lose.
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man, get it through your skull. As far as mainframes go, there is no monopoly in any form right now.
Really, this is like (imaginary scenario): saying that Microsoft has a monopoly on NTFS because they aren't licensing it to hercules when hercules asked them to license it to GPLV3. But oh, they're a convicted monopolist, so they're a monopoly!
You are stretching things even beyond logic.
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TurboHercules SAS has not asked IBM to change its licensing terms one bit. They've only asked the IBM sell its very same license to run on the Hercules platform.
If you have a bunch of legacy software - stuff from 1965 written in COBOL with the source code lost in the early 80s - you have no choice but to buy your computing power from IBM. Nothing else will do the job. Period. That's a monopoly. It's not a hypothetical, either: application software written in the late 60s for OS/360 will run on today's z/OS
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That is changing the license! It wasn't licensed for the hercules platform. Suddenly, because they say no, and say "it might infringe on our patents", that's a threat? They never even threatened to do anything. In fact, you did, and look at where we are now that you did.
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"No one forgets that, and no one wants IBM to forget it. And most importantly, no one demands anything for free" Oh really? Is there an alternate explanation for this statement in the second letter to IBM?
"In the unlikely event that IBM believes that the Hercules open source project infringes any IBM intellectual property, we kindly ask you too add any such property to the portfolio of patents that IBM has already pledged for the free use of the open source community".
That statement seems to say to me quite clearly that they expect IBM to give up it's IP for FREE.
That's a misinterpretation. Since IBM wants to position itself in the eyes of the FOSS community as a generous donor of patent licenses, anyone can of course make a suggestion to add more patents to the pledge. If you're pro-FOSS, wouldn't you also like them to go from 500 pledged patents to 1,000, from 1,000 to 10,000, and ideally pledge them all?
But that doesn't mean to demand it. By demanding I mean what someone claims he's legally entitled to. In antitrust law - and we're talking about an antitrust comp
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OK, so where did they ask IBM for FRAND licenses and get rejected? AFAIK, there has not been even a hint of a suggestion anywhere that they did that. Instead, they make statements like they think it is 'unlikely' that IBM, a company which proudly touts it's investments and patents, would have any IP relating to it's flagship hardware and architecture.
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OK, so where did they ask IBM for FRAND licenses and get rejected? AFAIK, there has not been even a hint of a suggestion anywhere that they did that.
In this blog posting [blogspot.com] you can find links to all four letters. The first one [turbohercules.com] says toward the bottom of page 1: "The pricing, conditions and limitations of that license would be at the sole discretion of IBM on reasonable and fair terms.
Instead, they make statements like they think it is 'unlikely' that IBM, a company which proudly touts it's investments and patents, would have any IP relating to it's flagship hardware and architecture.
I'm not aware of any such "unlikely" statement by TurboHercules. In their second letter they said they were surprised to be told that their platform infringes any IBM intellectual property. They had reasons to be surprised, given that the Hercules project started in 1999 and IB
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That first letter only talks about licensing z/OS to TurboHercules customers, which has absolutely nothing to do with patents. They were asking for permission to let non-IBM customers run z/OS. They were NOT asking IBM to grant licenses to emulate z/Architecture.
In the second letter to IBM, in the paragraph starting at the bottom of the first page, they make the quote I posted above
"In the unlikely event that IBM believes that the Hercules open source project infringes any IBM intellectual property, we ki
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When IBM's lawyers say that something you're working on infringes their patents (and make no mistake, those letters were thoroughly vetted by IBM's legal team before they ever left the premises), you'd be a fool not to take that as a threat. Only an IBM shill would think it's merely a love note.
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They are not patents that affect 'emulation', they are patents on elements of the z architecture. They do not come into play on the older OSs, because they don't run z architecture, and any patents on things used by those old OSs are long since expired.
As for the supposed anti-trust issues: what market is it that IBM supposedly dominates? Is it 'computing'? Is it 'servers'? Is it large-capacity servers? None of those seem to apply. The 'market', as you are defining it, is IBM z/Architecture machines.
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"Concerning Groklaw, I don't want to make claims as to who funds it (although a lot of people have previously "
Okay then don't
"- not in this discussion here but elsewhere - voiced theories that might make sense), but there's no doubt that it's been slavishly loyal to IBM all along. Like I said, Groklaw's PJ is more loyal to IBM than Rush Limbaugh is to the Republican Party. Even if PJ doesn't disclose anything, I venture to guess Rush Limbaugh makes a lot of money, so the Republican Party can't afford him a
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Uh, what? How are donations to a website from anonymous sources magically associated to IBM? Now you're trolling. Don't think you can get by slashdotters on a computer related simple but somewhat technical issue as you're trying. As much as there are stupid slashdotters, they ar e not falling for your ideas.
What pie in the sky is this again?
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Lets copy from Groklaw. I'll do this one for PJ, even if she might not want it. Lets skip pleasantries, shall we?
There are legal requirements to disclose who is funding you in the US. As Groklaw has confirmed, there is no funding from IBM.
So, how about you tell us Florian - Who is funding you? Who pays your bills to lobby?
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PJ didn't debunk it at all. Only her fanboys think she did.
She ignores facts and twists words, taking things out of context, just to make IBM look good in whatever it is they're doing. She did it to me repeatedly before throwing me off the site entirely.
I started my own blog [ibmvshercules.com] to post the parts of the story that PJ ignores or twists out of any recognizable shape.
PJ's done a lot of admirable work in the IBM vs. SCO case, but her comments on other things reveal her as at least a rabid fangirl who thinks IBM can
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They're not defending copyrights, because those aren't in dispute. Nobody is saying that IBM should change the license they issue their software products under. All that anyone is asking is that they agree to license that same software on other platforms.
IBM's attack is patent-based, pure and simple. Worse, it's software patents, because if they're strictly hardware, then software can't infringe them. It's an attack on Hercules itself, simply because that's what TurboHercules SAS is using. They may be tryin
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The license itself would not need to change one bit. The only difference is that IBM would sell that license to users of Hercules. Nobody's demanding that IBM open source z/OS, as PJ and her fanboys have claimed. Nobody's demanding that IBM change their license at all. It's purely a matter of who they will sell their licenses to. That is not copyright, or patent law. It's squarely within the realm of antitrust law.
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OK, but has this legal opinion been confirmed by any other non-lawyers?
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are you kidding? This whole thing, including ibm's "threat", was never even confirmed by lawyers!
this is the issue. A whole lot of nothing.
Re:Groklaw debunked nothing but straw men (Score:5, Interesting)
HAHAHAHAHAHA Florian! The man represents himself. Color me surprised.
This is not about patents, and you are 100% incorrect.
I know you mean well, but everything you do causes problems for open source. Please go away. Do you have any idea how much you're negatively impacting open source? You are seriously a bane on free software.
Secondly, citing your own blog is not fact. It's completely insubstantiated. Come back with something that actually makes sense and isn't spin, Florian.
There is no abuse of rights. IBM has a copyright and if they choose to exert it they can. Are you going to tell me that if I copyright something I shouldn't be able to exert that copyright? What world do you live in?
I love how you fail to read the groklaw article where it shows that this has nothing to do with IBM's patents. Hercules is asking IBM to license something to a non-GPL compatible license. Since when is that IBM's responsibility to allow, when it would modify their own license? I hate MS for example, but you wouldn't expect them to license something under GPLv3 when it would modify or restrict their own license, would you?
this is about copyright, not IP rights, and not antitrust. Get your laws right. It's not anticompetitive, either. Anyone can still go out and make their own implementation, and guess what? Hercules has already done so.
Re:Groklaw debunked nothing but straw men (Score:5, Informative)
I think Florian's beef is that IBM's response letter mentioned patents which may be infringed by the hercules product -- and how one of them was on the 'gift to open source' list. Of course, even then he's wrong: the open source hercules project is different than the commercial product which is seeking the copyright license.
The bottom line is the commercial hercules people started this fight and they were in the wrong to assert that IBM must license its properties to anyone who comes by and asks. The patent (non-) issue doesn't have anything to do with it and its an emotional sideshow to get the OSS folks to be on the commercial hercules' side.
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the open source hercules project is different than the commercial product which is seeking the copyright license.
It's 100% the open source software. They sell you services in addition, and if you want, you can buy a server from them. If you claim that this typical open source business model (we're not talking about TurboHercules having created any proprietary software) doesn't deserve to be considered an open source approach, then what about Red Hat, Novell, Alfresco, Canonical and so many other open source companies out there? What if someone runs Oracle 11g on Linux? Should anyone who promised not to assert patents
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If i said it was closed source then I misspoke.
But, that isn't the point: the open source project isn't affected. The commercial entity which is repackaging hercules has been informed (not sued, not C&D, just informed) that if they continue with their lawsuit against IBM then IBM might consider using this list of patents against them. Again, not against the open source hercules community but the commercial entity.
I think software patents suck, but using a lawsuit to try to force someone to do somethi
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TurboHercules SAS isn't cannibalizing IBM's customer base for one simple reason: IBM abandoned the segment of the customer base that Hercules can satisfy a long time ago. They just don't sell small mainframes any more. The z/PDT, their emulator, is only available under highly restrictive conditions that essentially rule out anything but program testing.
As for problems from emulation bugs, IBM dealt with their software running on other people's hardware for decades, and know how to do it. The support require
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This is simply false. The smallest current generation 'mainframe' IBM sells is the 2098-A01, which runs at a paltry 28 MIPS, and can run any z/OS workload. The largest is the 2097-764, which runs at 30000 MIPS. In between those two extremes are several hundred more models to choose from. Almost any emulation is going to run better than 28 MIPS.
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Priced a 2098-A01 lately? By the time you add DASD, you're well over a half million bucks. The low end of the market isn't going to be able to afford that.
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Wait a sec, I thought your argument was that they don't offer a small mainframe, so you weren't taking their sales. Now it would appear as what you meant was they don't offer a CHEAP mainframe, and you do want to take their sales. Which is it?
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Your argument was that IBM didn't abandon the low end. I was answering that. That's not a low end machine, especially when you consider that its performance is artificially hobbled to protect IBM's lockin. You can buy the same processor - in fact, it's in the original box, just turned off - as an IFL (dedicated Linux processor) for a tenth that price.
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I honestly have no idea what you are talking about anymore. A 2097-A01 costs approx $97000. An IFL costs $125000. I fail to see how an IFL is one tenth of the price, or what that has to do with anything anyway. Furthermore, how does artificially hobbling protect IBM's lock-in? Are you actually trying to say that these boxes (which IBM makes a profit on) are TOO competitive?
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The low end of the market isn't even going to need a mainframe, Jay. What's your point? This isn't even accurate.
The groups that can afford and see use for a mainframe purchase one. surprise?
Re:Groklaw debunked nothing but straw men (Score:5, Informative)
IBM did nothing.
There was no bullying. They never even sent a Cease and Desist! So what did they do, exactly? Our Turbohercules guy asked for clarification and got it, and flipped out.
Again, linking to your own blog with your own opinions is disingenuous and the kind of spin that you are frankly, known for, Florian. Tit for tat sir, if you want to play LMGTFY, then I'm going to call you on the fact that you're a known for misleading comments and redirecting debates.
So lets go onward to things that you also fail to understand, shall we? I don't have all day, after all. IBM *does* have copyright on their code, and if you read their license, you would understand that their control of the copyright defines the scenario. Why? Well lets take a look at the IBM license. Do you know what it is? LGPL. Maybe you should look up what the LGPL does, as it is about copyright, and not software patents.
So you're saying that the fault here is IBM, which indirectly blames LGPL. This is why and how you are detrimental to the F/OSS community. Please leave it and go back to lobbying or work for MS or something. If IBM gets screwed here, the GPL would be weakened accordingly. Way to go! That surely must be good for open source, right?
Is this related to MS? No. Don't bring it up and waste my time, buddy. I know your games. You've been around too long to bring down a community that is way too established for you to go to. Guess which community that is? The F/OSS one.
And with that said, I have to get back to actual real work, as opposed to verbal sparring.
Only dominant companies get regulated (Score:2, Troll)
Even though it was posted by an Anonymous Coward I'll try to shed light on what's been said:
My understanding is that the EU restricted Microsoft from shipping Windows with IE, etc without presenting users with the other available options. They did not state that Microsoft's programs must be allowed to run on any platform.
Microsoft doesn't tie its software to hardware. What the European Commission and the EU's Court of First Instance determined was that Microsoft tied is operating system to certain additional components (initially the Media Player; later on, the browser case you mentioned also came up), meaning you could only buy Windows if you also bought the Media Player.
In fact, all of the cases with Apple and OS/X requiring Apple hardware would suggest that there's plenty of precedent that opposes your argument.
An antitrust regulator can only intervene against a company th
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see, as much as I could say negative things about the man, he does honestly mean well. It's quite misguided and perhaps questionable at times, but he really is anti software patents.
However, this is like people who totally twist an issue and assume it's still valid, and so he thinks he is supporting anti-patent actions, but in reality he's pulling down open source with it. You are 100% correct.
It's like the people who take one line from the bible as the meaning or explanation or rationale of their entire li
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Maybe [your comments] are not strictly FUD, but it doesn't prevent them from being incorrect.
TurboHercules wants IBM to allow the OS they developed for the patented hardware they developed it to be run on to be licensed to run on emulators that TurboHercules will sell.
TH didn't license any of the underlying technology, and did not develop IBM-compatible hardware that does not violate the patents in question. TH was banking on IBM's pledge (intended to support FOSS development) not to assert patents to be t
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IBM has a problem with a competing (copycat) platform that TH is proposing which would cut in on the low end (and eventually the high end) of IBM's mainframe sales...not with the Hercules project itself.
You make a distinction that's totally baseless. The TurboHercules offering is 100% the open source software plus they sell you services and if you want you can get a server resold by them. That's a typical FOSS approach to doing business. You can't call TurboHercules a "copycat" without simultaneously saying the same about the Hercules open source project.
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It's the "plus" part that's the problem...they want to sell a platform identical to IBM's without a licensing agreement. They asked for one, and IBM said "no" (to recap what I already said). That is *not* a typical FOSS approach, and we're not talking about *software*, we're talking about *hardware*.
Emulation is fine...IBM has said they have no problem with that software project. A competitor wanting to sell a complete platform that directly competes is *not* fine, and has nothing to do with the fact tha
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There will be no grand grassroots campaign to demonize IBM for this
I never meant to start one. I look at this and various other open source patent issues and I think this is now an important situation in which antitrust intervention can, once again, be positive for open source. But what I'd like to happen more than anything else is for IBM to offer fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory z/OS licensing terms and to retract is patent threats. I have no intention at all to "demonize" IBM. They can only demonize themselves, basically. Or they could do the right thing and supp
A bit paranoid, aren't we? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're so full of shit it's amazing you can stand.
Look at my user ID. I was here before groklaw ever existed. Nobody "sent" me here. I have nev
A big corporation with double standards?! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A big corporation with double standards?! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all about interoperability (Score:2)
In the political context that's relevant here, it's not primarily about which category of software you promote or attack. It's about the concept of interoperability. IBM's denial to make its proprietary z/OS operating system available for use on non-IBM hardware and its use of patents on a programming interface (the mainframe CPU instruction set) is an attack on interoperability [blogspot.com]. Therefore, they have a serious credibility problem when trying to tell policy-makers that other companies must make their patents
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Difference between IBM and Apple cases (Score:2)
Wrong. The courts in the USA have held in the Apple vs Pystar case that tying an OS to specific proprietary hardware is a perfectly legit business strategy as it creates a barrier to entry.
Please have a look at this other comment of mine here on slashdot [slashdot.org] explaining why the Apple case isn't a precedent for the IBM mainframe monopoly issue. And it also explains why Apple may in the future also have to provide interoperability because of a new EU law that's in the making, but under today's antitrust law comparing Apple to IBM is the same as comparing apples to bananas.
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Present a case with some reasonable legal arguments not made up from thin air and people might respond more positively.
TurboHercules has made its antitrust case, and so has now NEON, and previously T3 Technologies. Those three companies have filed it with the European Commission -- not with you, not with slashdot, not with me. Some companies have also mae submissions to the US Department of Justice on mainframe issues from what I hear.
Your paid shilling isn't any more welcome here than it was at Groklaw. If I'm not mistaken, PJ banned you over there. I've never seen a ban here but you might be the precedent!
The first part is simply an attack on the messenger instead of a factual way to deal with a message. The second part is something I'm totally unaware of. I don't have a Groklaw account. I may
Emulation/virtualization (Score:2)
Both companies want to use IBM products in a manor that IBM doesn't want their product to be used. This is not about communication between an IBM product and other products.
Just try to think of the situation of those mainframe customers with an estimated 300 billion lines of program code (most of it in COBOL) still in use. They want to use that code, in which they've invested exorbitant amounts of money over the years, on non-IBM hardware, typically Intel-based servers, which is what Hercules can technically enable. This is about interoperability between the existing programs ("legacy code") and newer hardware.
In my view emulation is a particularly important interoperability i
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They chose a proprietary platform at the beginning and now they're stuck with the lock-in. When you get on the proprietary plane that's the cost of the ticket.
They bought their tickets
they knew what they were getting into
I say let 'em crash
Can't leave those customers in the lurch (Score:2)
They chose a proprietary platform at the beginning and now they're stuck with the lock-in. When you get on the proprietary plane that's the cost of the ticket. They bought their tickets they knew what they were getting into I say let 'em crash
That's what you can say but regulators have to apply the law as it stands and monopolists aren't allowed to preserve a lock-in by whatever means they please.
I can agree with you in part that the mainframe situation will clearly serve as a lesson for those who are affected by it and by others who take a look at it, and yes, this is an issue that doesn't happen with Free and Open Source Software.
But when 80% of the world's data are crunched by a legacy architecture, it's not economically reasonable (and there
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There is no lock in.
Sure there is. To give you only one example that was just written about it today: the airline industry [computing.co.uk].
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So, let me get this straight then, since I am a bit confused.
Are they using any IBM software?
Or have they done a clean room implementation of a set of software than entirely emulates the software stack of IBM?
One of these seems ok, the other seems like it runs into the need to abide by the license set forth by the maker of the software in question.
This is about interoperability between the existing programs ("legacy code") and newer hardware.
Only if that interoperability is done using no code licensed by IBM. Is that the case here?
Otherwise, they are free to beef up their emulation project to complet
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Are they using any IBM software?/p>
Hercules is an open source project that was developed as such and it doesn't incorporate any IBM code to the best of my knowledge. Even IBM doesn't claim that.
Or have they done a clean room implementation of a set of software than entirely emulates the software stack of IBM?
Hercules emulates the mainframe CPU, so it interprets the CPU instruction set on Intel-based server. I would certainly say that it does so in a "clean room implementation" form. No theft of anything if that's what you mean.
One of these seems ok, the other seems like it runs into the need to abide by the license set forth by the maker of the software in question.
Emulating a CPU instruction set is obviously not enough to run applications that usually are built on top of an operating system.
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So you are saying they can only run their code on IBM mainframe systems without spending money, and you want IBM to lose money so they can save money. Sounds like a poor business decision on their part.
IBM's management will do what's best for IBM's shareholders. But since they have a monopoly, antitrust regulators can intervene if their rent-seeking is an anticompetitive practice. They wouldn't even have to have a monopoly for that, but at least a dominant market position, as discussed in this other comment here [slashdot.org].
Would you want a monopolist to milk you? If you were affected, I'm sure you'd also call for government intervention. That's why antitrust law was created: to protect consumers.
They need to make a business decision to either modify their code to run on something else
We talk about 300 bi
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Guess you have never heard of Amdahl,
I have. On Wikipedia you can read that the namesake founder of Amdahl coined the term FUD to describe how IBM tried to discourage customers from using Amdahl products. Where's Amdahl today?
They have a small market share but 90% of a market is not a monopoly.
I don't want to get into the debate over "monopoly" vs. "superdominant market share". The key thing is that antitrust law prohibits the abuse of a "dominant" position. You say they have a 90% share, so if you're right, then that's more than enough to be considered dominant and to fall under antitrust rules. Why would we t
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Amdahl and Hitachi exited the mainframe business in 2001. IBM has 100% of the market, because they've either driven the competition out of business (Fundamental Software) or bought it up to make antitrust complaints go away (PSI). There is no competition in the market for systems that can run legacy mainframe workloads. That's what makes IBM a monopolist.
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What is clear is that you have an agenda against IBM.
In this case, the law has yet to step in and say that IBM is abusing a monopoly position, even though you continue to imply that they are abusing a monopoly position.
" Would you want to pay 60 times as much for your telephone charges as you do now, just because someone exploits a monopoly so shamelessly?"
Again, it is your position that abuse is going on NOT the "laws". I know when I purchase enterprise class equipment (not mainframe level btw) I pay a lo
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In another post you said that 'certainly no-one expects IBM to give it's IP away for free', and here you say they must 'retract their patent threats'. Well, which is it? Do you expect IBM to give away it's billions of dollars in investments or not?
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Is your gigabyte of RAM at home in a system with a MTBF >30 years? Does your GB of RAM at home correct errors? Does it even DETECT errors? If it gets too many errors, does it silently fence off a section? If it fences off too many sections, does it automatically call the manufacturer to send out someone with a replacement? Once the replacement gets there, does the system and all applications continue running while the RAM is replaced? Is the cost of developing your non-correcting, non-detecting, no
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Basically IBM is looking at their "bottom line" in both instances..
For ODF, IBM has the potential to get more money as users become no longer tied to Microsoft Office. (Lotus and whatever other "document" products IBM has that may support ODF.. What they are I am not sure.. I don't use them).
For the Hercules issue, since IBM "HAS" the majority stake in the products in that arena, having an open competitor would decrease their income.
It's all about $$$.. Not about open source.
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Yup. IBM claims to be a great friend of open source...but their actions in this case clearly show that they're only a friend of open source as long as they don't have to compete with it.
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You're right that large corporations are complex organizations with a diversity of interests. It's not about morality in this case. It's about political credibility:
IBM wants to convince policy-makers such as in the EU (and actually all around the globe) of the benefits of patent-unencumbered standards only in markets or market segments where IBM has nothing to lose. But in their own core business (the mainframe business generates about 50% of IBM's corporate-wide profits) they oppose it vehemently, I would
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This isn't about political credibility or any IBM credo.
Where do you come up with this? Anything open source licensed can be reimplemented with or without IBM's blessing. What's an example? How about the product in question!
Quit spinning things like this is an IBM intent. They don't have to license to everyone.
If I said you should pay me for my implementation of your product, would you say yes? No, you wouldn't.
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Even though your last sentence was an insult, I do want to provide clarity on the legal and technical issues you wanted to know more about. I hope that you'll be more receptive to these factual explanations than the tone of your comment (especially the last part) suggested.
Please explain what 'standard' IBM is locking up as related to these cases specifically.
Anyone working on standards policy can confirm to you and I'm now telling you that there are standards that are set by an SSO (standards-setting organization; some prefer SDO for standards development organization), such as ODF (the organ
ODF relationship with mainframes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, the last sentence lost me. How does the OpenDocument Format relate to mainframe software?
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info from http://en.swpat.org (Score:3, Informative)
Here's some articles swpat.org has on these topics - but only on the software patent aspects:
Discussion over whether X company is right to defend their revenue stream etc. etc. would be outside the scope.
Re:info from http://en.swpat.org (Score:5, Informative)
IBM hasn't really done anything, but everyone has taken it as aggression. IBM said "be careful" and people went "oh, shit, we're gonna get sued!" and panicked, not unlike the gif for shut down everything. It'd be like you asking Microsoft if it's possible that your software might infringe and they say yes (even before knowing what it is) just due to safety. It's not a threat.
Don't get me wrong, IBM isn't some magically innocent pure company, - but there is a lot more spin than fact here, and in fact turbohercules has now provided the aggression via NEON. It's quite surprising actually. Considering that IBM could, in the worst case, send a C&D first, where Neon just went out and sued (and we have no indication that they talked to IBM at all - I doubt they did). This is basically a politically fueled lawsuit.
swpat, while interesting, doesn't have much more than aggregations of links from other sites.
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> swpat, while interesting, doesn't have much more than aggregations of links from other sites.
That's one of the goals. We did tonnes of work in the EU in 2003, and LPF did great work from 1991-1995, and there was great work in New Zealand in March. The problem is, websites rust terribly. The documentation from the EU 2003-2005 is partly taken offline, partly moved, and a lot of it always relied on having specific knowledge of the relevant sites anyway.
swpat.org is aggregating that info so th
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in 2015 or 2020 (as I assumed you meant 2020), do I think everyone will remember? No. Nor does that matter. Do I think the blogs will be around? Yes. Not just Groklaw, I should add. However, Groklaw is being archived in the library of congress, after all. Don't get me wrong, redundancy is good.
Meanwhile, link aggregation doesn't mean the site has anything else useful. People can bookmark crap on their own. How about you start archiving the sites you watch if you want to be useful?
Otherwise, if the sites go
What's on en.swpat.org (Score:2)
I'm devising an archival method, but archive.org is actually doing a 90% complete job already, so it's not priority #1.
Anti-swpat campaigns have gathered masses of great data and documents over the years, but it's never well organised. To an outsider, it's opaque. I've worked on various such campaigns over the past eight years, and I know where to find most things, and I know how much of a problem the mess is. So I'm documenting all this insider-knowledge so that anyone else can do the work I do.
There ar
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Nobody modded your links informative, they modded swpat informative - and appropriately as such. It is relevant, even if not that special by itself, as stated above.
Archive.org respects copyright and other things that it shouldn't - it's up to people themselves if they want to do good archiving. To say "leave it all to archive.org" shows how useless swpat intends to remain. Swpat would be a lot more interesting if it added such a value. Hell, archive articles that appropriately should be documented, even if
A point of comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
This seems structurally comparable to the legal and moral frou-frou over running MacOS on non-Apple hardware.
Discuss.
WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Mainframe lock-in example: the airline industry (Score:2)
Airline industry to invest just 1.8 per cent of revenue in 2010 [computing.co.uk]
Many airline systems remained locked on legacy mainframe systems and databases, with cost-saving consolidation initiatives that have been widely implemented in other industries such as virtualisation andcloud computing having made little impact so far.
Please enlighten me (Score:2)