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Open Source Complaint Against IBM Gets Support
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."
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 against Linux then get away with using patents against the Linux part of the setup?
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 that has a dominant market position. IBM has a mainframe monopoly, so it's obviously dominant. Microsoft was considered dominant for desktop PC operating systems. Concerning Apple, I know experts who believe they're dominant as an online music distributor. But the Mac isn't a dominant platform in terms of market share. Simply put, if you're a little guy in the market, you don't get regulated, but monopolists, quasi-monopolists and other dominant players do get regulated. That's why company A getting away with something isn't necessarily a precedent for similar behavior by a dominant company B.
The European Commission now intends to also create interoperability requirements, by way of a new law, for other "significant market players", but that's just for your additional information and doesn't relate to IBM's mainframe monopoly, for which we have antitrust law in place already. For Apple, that new initiative could make a major difference.