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IBM Faces DOJ Antitrust Inquiry On Mainframes
Several sources are reporting that IBM is facing an antitrust inquiry from the US Department of Justice due to a supposed refusal to issue mainframe OS licenses to competitors. "Part of CCIA's complaint stems from the tech giant's treatment of former competitor Platform Solutions. IBM had little competition in the mainframe market when Platform Solutions, early this decade, began work on servers that could mimic the behavior of more expensive IBM mainframes, CCIA said. Platform Solutions, based on past mainframe agreements between IBM and the DOJ, requested copies of IBM's OS and technical information under a licensing agreement. IBM declined to grant Platform Solutions a license and prohibited customers from transferring IBM software licenses to Platform Solutions machines, said CCIA, which has members that are potential competitors of IBM."
Hmmm, look at who was running the government when abusive monopolies are formed and re-formed, and who is running the government when the DOJ issues antitrust tickets?
Free Martian Whores!
If Apple's and Microsoft's market shares were reversed, it wouldn't be different at all. But Apple by no means has a monopoly on PCs. This is about IBM abusing its mainframe monopoly. If Sun, etc were as big as IBM it would be ok, but it's not.
But Apple does have a monopoly on Mac hardware - just as IBM has on IBM hardware. the fact that there are other platforms that run other OS's is irrelevant
One rule for all.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I agree with you, but in the MS antitrust trial, it was ruled that Macs are not part of the PC market, and that Apple did not compete in the same space as MS.
IBM is a monopoly. There are no other competitors in the mainframe business. IBM just doesnt make the OS they make the hardware as well. They essentially broke every other competitors back by either pricing them out or buying them up. They became the defacto big iron supplier in the world and abused said position every time anyone came out with better faster or cheaper hardware than them, history has repeated itself. This position allows them to dictate the market place and pretty much kill off invention and improvement. The pc market place is full of competitors duking it out to make a buck and gain your business as a hardware supplier. The mainframe you have a choice for both the OS and hardware it is IBM or ...
There are plenty of other competitors in the large scale computing environment that compete quite well with IBM mainframes. And plenty of companies migrating to those competitors every year. IBM offers a stellar product with outstanding service, but that comes at an extremely high price. Many of its customers are not willing to continue paying that high price, so they migrate to other solutions. Just as Apple can dictate to the OSX marketplace, but not the entire desktop marketplace, IBM can dictate to the mainframe marketplace but not the entire large scale computing marketplace. Other competitors left the mainframe hardware marketplace because they did not want to invest the kind of money IBM was willing to. IBM's large systems division had a vision of where mainframes could go and they bet the farm on it. Through the '90s and the early part of this decade IBM introduced innovation after innovation for mainframes that left their competitors in the dust. Far from stifling innovation they led it.