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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."
can we not go through this again? it's been debunked thoroughly.
This is the fault of Hercules trying to get IBM to license the way Hercules wants, not anything that is IBM's fault.
They say IBM has double standards as if this were supposed to be shocking. Microsoft has its open source lab, Apple has made threats against open source projects while contributing to other projects, Mozilla and Red Hat leverage their trademarks, etc. Corporations do whatever is profitable, they are not some bastion of morality, so why should we be shocked that IBM fights open source projects while pushing other open source projects?
Palm trees and 8
Sorry, the last sentence lost me. How does the OpenDocument Format relate to mainframe software?
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.
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.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
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.
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.
This seems structurally comparable to the legal and moral frou-frou over running MacOS on non-Apple hardware.
Discuss.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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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 something that they don't want to sucks just as much.
Who the hell accepted a post from Florian Mueller? (Looks) Oh...
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
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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 lot more for it than I would for equipment I would use at home, but I also expect a lot more from it.
IBM didn't get to own a significant portion of the mainframe business because they were the only game in town. They earned their position and even at your claimed 80% of the market, I am not sure that they can get away with too much abuse because the "law" would be brought to bear pretty quickly. Mainframes are the in realms of the big boys for the most part due to the expense of their operation. The big boys have the resources and the influence to go after IBM if they are truly being abused.
I understand the complexes of moving a code.
"Since there isn't any competition anymore for IBM in the mainframe market, there are antitrust issues."
So %20 doesn't represent any competition? Other options are available and economics will determine what a company with a lot of legacy code will do. However, a lot of companies know the value of using IBM for mission critical computing.
Yes there are potential anti-trust issues but the "law" has yet to identity any abuse to this point.
Oh god! you link to sys-con.com as a reference and worse yet to Maureen O'Gara is the author. Well that says it all I WILL NO LONG REPLY TO YOU
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 never worked for IBM. I don't need anyone else to tell me you're a jerk - your posts speak for themselves.
Go cry a river somewhere else, because the old-timers here aren't going to buy it.
By the time I'm writing this, the comment to which I'm replying has a Score of 0 and is categorized as a "Troll" posting. When the discussion here started, it had moved up quickly to a score of 5 and was regarded as Interesting if not Insightful.
But then there were calls on Groklaw, such as this one, to rush over here to /. and use mod points against me.
I'm sure there's a huge number of very reasonable people on Groklaw, but there's PJ and a circle of people who use such schemes to suppress the very truth that Groklaw falsely claims to dig for.
I perfectly understand that /. is meant to be a self-moderating platform. However, in order for such a system to work, mod points must be used according to reasonable standards. If a posting disagrees with Groklaw, which my comment certainly did, but does so in a polite, factual, focused and on-topic way, there's absolutely no justification for categorizing it as a "Troll" posting. It's also unacceptable to vote it down to a score of 0. It's obvious that a posting that is less popular with a certain audience won't move up as quickly as another, or that it might not move up too much at all, but a score of 0 must be justified and in this case, if you read the original comment I'm referring to (here's a link), that is not the case.
I have complained to /. management over this organized misuse of mod points and hijacking of a neutral, opinion-forming platform (which is what /. has been for a long time) by another community that certainly has a lot of overlap (hence they have mod points here).
If this kind of attack is accepted and if the same people can misuse mod points again and again, this would mean that /. is at the mercy of the hardcore, unreasonable part of the Groklaw crowd that is a minority not only on /. but even on Groklaw itself.