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Open Source Complaint Against IBM Gets Support

Posted by kdawson on from the flashback-to-the-eighties dept.

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."

1 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Groklaw debunked nothing but straw men by poetmatt · · 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.