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EU Launches Antitrust Investigation Against IBM
FlorianMueller writes "The European Commission announced today that it has launched two parallel antitrust investigations into IBM's mainframe practices, following complaints lodged by T3 Technologies last year and French open source startup TurboHercules in March. EU regulators suspect an abuse of a dominant position and illegal tying of IBM's mainframe hardware to its proprietary mainframe operating system z/OS. There's even the possibility of a third case based on a complaint filed very recently by NEON, and the DoJ is also looking into this matter. IBM now finds itself in a situation previously experienced by Microsoft and Intel. This may also affect IBM's credibility when lobbying in the EU for open standards."
Reader coondoggie points out a response from IBM saying that the accusations are being driven by Microsoft and other competitors.
When has there ever been any credibility to corporate lobbying?
Palm trees and 8
Tea Party launches Antichrist investigation against BHO.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
ibm has been way too chummy with open standards and supported open source initiatives. as per a dastardly lobby group in usa declared recently, open source is harmful to profits. (their). they even equated it with piracy. hence, now, corporations are punishing ibm for being too chummy with open source. talk about mafia.
Read radical news here
Wow...a company tying it's software to the hardware they manufactured! Holy crap...who could have imagined!?!
Here is some facts and opinion from Groklaw, at least on the TurboHercules part.
Groklaw
Digging a Little Deeper into TurboHercules/IBM - OpenMainframe.org and Microsoft
Despite the fact that PJ probably has a few blinders at work when opining on IBM I believe this to be relevant considering
Florian's seemingly diametrically opposed (to PJ's that is) opinions on IBM...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Reminds me of IBM's long history of trouble with US anti-trust.
Diversion is not a defense -- especially if it doesn't make sense.
Microsoft had to pay the highest antitrust fine in EU history and was pursued over three antitrust issues in recent years (MediaPlayer, Samba, browsers; MediaPlayer and Samba were one case but with two distinct parts). It doesn't look like the Commission does Microsoft's bidding ;-)
The Commission's press release also mentions an issue about maintenance. No company whatsoever filed a complaint about that. But the Commission, probably because it looked into the mainframe market as a whole as a result of those different complaints, apparently determined that there's a problem that needs further scrutiny.
Hercules is an 11-year old open source project. Did Microsoft start that one back in 1999 in order to hurt IBM a decade later?
There's also the NEON complaint. NEON's principal founder is a billionaire and former co-founder of BMC, a big enterprise/mainframe software company.
The bottom line is that IBM will have to address the concerns identified -- on substance, not on the basis of conspiracy theories.
If IBM can't disallow the use of z/OS under an emulator, does it also mean that Apple can't disallow OS X on Hackintoshes?
Finally, we get to the interesting part of TurboHercules v. IBM:
There's an antitrust dispute, with TurboHercules saying that IBM is abusing a dominant market position. That's normal. The cool part in this case is that IBM has mentioned that they have a pile of software patents.
That means that if the European institutions (commission and court of justice) decide that IBM has to allow interoperability, they should also have to decide if IBM can subsequently use their mentioned software patents to block that required interoperability.
It sounds like a no-brainer. Of course they should be allowed to use patents to negate court-imposed requirements. But it's not a no-brainer: It didn't work in the US, and it didn't work previously in the EU.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
"IBM now finds itself in a situation previously experienced by Microsoft and Intel."
How fast we forgot! Or maybe it's that you young uns never knew...IBM wrote the book on fighting and defeating anti-trust actions by not winning in court, but winning in the market place. Check out what happened 1956 and 1969, and how those events made IBM stronger, not weaker.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
"IBM now finds itself in a situation previously experienced by Microsoft and Intel."
Actually, IBM now finds itself in a situation previously experienced by IBM, too.
-=Maggie Leber=-
The European Union loves taking money from foreign rich corporations. Microsoft, Intel, etc. They'll just come up with a price tag in the billion dollars to help them pay for their austerity bills.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
It looks like someone's been fiddling with the wayback machine again. In other news, the government bailout of the buggy-whip industry is costing the taxpayers BILLIONS!
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
Normally, I side with the smaller companies when it comes to antitrust issues, having come out of the US Telecom industry... However, if they sue IBM for tying hardware and software together... they need to also sue Apple, Playstation, HTC, Microsoft (XBox), Nintendo, and any other hardware vendor that also supplies required software, or any software provider that requires specific hardware for their system.
> Of course they should be allowed to use patents to negate court-imposed requirements.
Typing too fast, I forgot the "n't" from "shouldn't". I'm sure that was obvious anyway.
The previous US and EU cases I mentioned are EU v. Microsoft (about Samba), and US FTC v. Rambus. In both cases, there was clear abusive practices, but we didn't get a statement in either case about MS or Rambus being prevented from using their patents later to prevent competition. In the EU, it looked like we'd win, but the closing statements by Neelie Kroes left the door open for MS.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Since they're also a customer, they can finally get some of their wasted money back! Brilliant! Seriously, IBM products are WAY overpriced.
I believe there were some complaints raised about the dominance of iTunes and the iPod/iPhone.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The company filing this complaint is not open source. That's not being truthful, pretending it's the open source project asking for the license. It's not. It's Turbo Hercules.
Florian, you need to be more careful in your speech, or more honest, whatever the problem may be. And I'd like to ask you a question, and you should answer it honestly: is Microsoft paying you to do this? Microsoft or a "satellite proxy"? Tell us.
This is the same company that said personal computers wouldn't take off. They made 250,000 PCs, just enough to cover the 2 million orders.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
But IBM's reply to the complaint strikes squarely at the open source project, because TurboHercules uses the Hercules open source project's code with no modifications. If TurboHercules violates IBM's intellectual property (specifically its patents), then so must the open source project.
And no, Microsoft's not paying me, either directly or indirectly. Not even Steve Ballmer's third cousin.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
OS/2 is the type of operating system Hitler himself would write if he was smart enough and had the knowledge and skill sets to do it.
Yo. I've heard lots of criticism about IBM's ill-fated OS/2 . . . but this one is a real gemstone. The has to be the biggest power-slam Godwin that has ever graced the Internet.
Actually, Hitler didn't do much himself . . . he ordered other folks to do stuff that he wanted done. Like, Albert Speer, who built up the war industry. And Werner von Braun and his rockets. Or Konrad Zuse ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse ), who actually did build a computer in Germany during World War II.
So, I don't think there's any point on speculating on what the Führer's operating system would look like.
Although, I do know what his cats looked like: http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/cgi-bin/seigmiaow.pl
Another point that comes to mind . . . Gordon Letwin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin) of Microsoft did a lot of the groundwork for OS/2. I've heard that he was a real onery chap to deal with . . . so maybe there is something to your theory.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
..as a return favour.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/64143
Companies decry government regulation and restrictions on the free market, and yet at the same time use those exact same "tools" of restrictions to subvert each other.
Maybe that's free market at it's best? Using all tools at your disposal. Sure makes things messy though, doesn't it?
I can't say IBM's finger pointing at Microsoft is terribly surprising though...
"--wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy." --Benjamin Franklin
"EU regulators suspect an abuse of a dominant position and illegal tying of IBM's mainframe hardware to its proprietary mainframe operating system z/OS."
"Like Macintosh and OSX?"
"Like the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad and iOS?"
Given the results, I find it hard to see why this is bad.
I will not mourn that which I never had to lose. - Unknown
wat
> blinders on how?
Well, she has censored certain facts (and anyone who tried to discuss them on Groklaw). Like when she deleted a post showing that Red Hat is a CCIA member, or the PDF to text of the four letters between TH and IBM (formerly available as the parent of this post, but that link will just give you a blank page). Somehow, she STILL makes it out that TH brought this upon themselves when IBM FUDed them in letter 2 by raising the specter of Hercules itself being an "infringing platform", when all TH had asked prior to that was if it was possible to do business with them. But letters 3 and 4 came out first, so it's understandable that many people are confused.
Then she has an awful lot of hate for Florian personally and anyone else who tries to correct her. In fact, she's downright nasty when she disagrees. That's how AllParadox left. Nobody is free to disagree with her. You can be polite and well-mannered as you wish. You can cite facts and sources. But she'll just disappear them if she disagrees. And she's removed more than a few accounts, like on this story, where you can see that she would delete the account of someone who is only trying to help. Ask yourself: if that person was really a troll, why would they be contributing to Groklaw? Exactly what did their account get deleted for? Can you imagine the people who post Goatse here turning over a new leaf and deciding to help the site? But Slashdot uses transparent moderation: you know if you're at -1 or not. But you won't even know you've been moderated on Groklaw unless you know how her invisible moderation works: I can still see my own posts, but nobody else can (unless they replied before I got vanished). You have to use a proxy or something to see if your posts still exist.
That would be great if she were moderating the Goatse guy out of existence. But exactly why is it necessary to vanish someone who gives citations proving that many of her facts are in error? Shouldn't Groklaw post ALL the facts? And AllParadox isn't the only person to question her censorship of people merely for disagreeing.
This isn't new. It's been going on for ages. Plenty Groklaw supporters have gotten fed up. Or are you going to accuse several people who have written for Groklaw, moderated for Groklaw, and promoted Groklaw on Slashdot of all being anti-Groklaw trolls?
That's what she does, right? The only way someone could disagree with her is if they were paid to or if they're trolling, at least in her mind. Never mind the fact that I can find plenty of people who have worked closely with her only to get fed up. Yeah, I knew her. Her real email (past the filter) is pj2@groklaw.net (she can change it again if she wants to).
But I guess she can call all this "trolling." As we all know, anyone who disagrees with her is a troll. It doesn't matter how much they try to cite their sources or argue that something is a mistake. No, if they disagree, they're clearly being paid by someone or something or question her. But it's always okay when she speculates wildly about people's motives.
Just for the record, lest people accuse me of holding all sorts of beliefs that I do not hold, I say that Darl & SCO can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned. I believe that PJ is a real person (a retired paralegal in Connecticut, if I'm not mistak
You're talking about US law.
This a EU investigation, and its legal grounding is different. Among others: tying your hardware to your software *is* illegal in EU, as it constitutes a bundled sale. Also, monopolies and oligopoles are under tight surveillance, and the EU can fine them if their margins reach beyond a certain threshold. There are full teams of statisticians who study sales numbers of telcos in EU, and determine what is a "fair" margin they are entitled to make.
This is what we call a "market-driven social economy", where we have managed to insert some of the good ideas of socialism while still relying on the market to allow some form of competition between tightly controlled corporations.
Whenever I see these anti-trust probes I can't but wonder why nobody cares about what I see as a textbook case of monopoly abuse.
Ebay has a definite monopoly on online auctions and they use it to push paypal down our throats (claiming not even Google checkout is safe...)
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Exactly. Both TomTom and HTC weren't open source companies either - in fact, they were even less so than TurboHercules, since they made their money selling proprietary software that just happened to have Linux as a base. Yet is there any question whatsoever that Microsoft's patent threats against them were an attack on Linux? (I seem to recall that was also over patents required to interoperate with their own software, just like the latest IBM salvo.) The ability to sell open source software, support for it, and products based on it commercially is an important part of what makes open source work.
In fact, Microsoft is arguably better than IBM in this regard. They've granted a fairly broad promise not to sue against non-commercial hobbyist developers of Linux and certain other key software that competes with them, so they're effectively restricted to going after commercial organizations profiting from it. As far as I know, IBM has done no such thing, and reserve the right to sue hobbyist developers of Hercules at will, or even hobbyist developers of Linux if they step on IBM's market too much.
There's an interestingly dishonest claim of dishonesty at the end of that Groklaw article. Apparently, TurboHercules both said that:
Indeed, just a few days before we filed the complaint with the European Commission, Mr. Mark Anzani, the CTO of IBM's mainframe division, wrote to me to allege that the open source Hercules emulator may have violated no fewer than 173 of IBM's patents or patent applications.
Not only did IBM deny our request, but it now suddenly claims, after ten years, that the Hercules open-source emulator violates IBM intellectual property that it has refused to identify.
According to PJ, these two statements contradict each other and demonstrate that "they intended to attack IBM no matter what IBM did". Except that making grandiose threatening claims about the number of patents infringed is not, in any way, identifying what patents have actually been infringed, and in fact provides next to no information. (In fact, I'm fairly sure that PJ said as much when Microsoft used the same threat against Linux.) There is absolutely no contradiction, and PJ's comment is spin and deceit of the worst kind.
Sorry, but you are entirely incorrect. In the letter where the 173 patents are mentioned is a list of each and every patent, including the patent number and title of the patent. This letter is directly linked to in the Groklaw article.
It is amazing how you can cite something that completely disproves the point you are trying to make and try to use it as 'proof'. Yes, Microsoft sued TomTom and HTC. Yet how many Linux users were sued? How many Linux developers were sued? So it IS possible to sue a commercial company who happens to be using open source, and at the same time leave the open source project, it's developers, and it's non-commercial users untouched. Yet here we have Jay once again complaining how it is IMPOSSIBLE for IBM to go after TH and leave him alone.
Exactly what would IBM have to gain by suing TurboHercules, Hercules or it's developers? Their 'product' is useless without IBMs blessing, and IBM isn't giving it. Now, if they succeed in FORCING IBM to license z/OS, then it is a whole new ballgame.
Let me quote from Groklaw: "This TomTom litigation is an attack on Linux, and it will be vigorously treated as such. Period."
Not an attack on one company, an attack on Linux itself! Yet somehow when it's IBM attacking a commercial company selling open source software by claiming that software's illegal to use, it's not an attack on the open source project.
> Sorry, but you are entirely incorrect. In the letter where the 173 patents are mentioned is a list of each and every patent, including the patent number and title of the patent. This letter is directly linked to in the Groklaw article.
You're talking about letter #4. They're talking about letter #2.
Everybody only remembers letters #3 & #4, because we saw them first (#3 asks them to identify the infringement, letter #4 is the list of patents).
But in letter #1, TH asks IBM to consider a business proposal. In letter #2, IBM calls the Hercules emulator an "infringing platform" without elaborating what they infringe or how. Letter #3, incidentally, is the one that requests that they identify how they're infringing and that they please consider adding those patents to their pledge, given that the Hercules emulator is QPL-licensed OSS.
Letter #4, of course, is where IBM gives a list and, after being reminded of that pledge (and that Hercules is under an OSI-approved license), lists three patents previously pledged. I won't claim that breaks the pledge (it doesn't really matter). But I will claim that's a deliberate insult, given the context of the prior discussions.
> In particular, they see nothing wrong with the fact that TH infringes IBM patents, and IBM therefore does not recognize them as a legitimate competitor.
So you admit that when they called the Hercules emulator an "infringing platform", that they were attacking an OSS-licensed product, right? Because TH couldn't infringe upon IBM's patents by using Hercules without Hercules being infringing, given that they use only it and commodity hardware. If you want to point out a hardware patent, I'll mention that AMD/Intel licenses any relevant patents for, and in doing so, the doctrine of patent exhaustion comes into play. Meaning that because you bought patent-covered parts made by someone with a patent license, you can't be sued for using them.
So when did we become so pro-software-patent around here, anyhow? Or are you going to pull a PJ and tell us that microcode is actually hardware, not code, proving that you have no idea what it is? Yes, it's pretty bare metal, but it's not like software running on another platform can create new hardware out of nothing, right? Put another way, maybe you can just tell me how using software can infringe upon a hardware patent? Via business methods? Are those better than software patents? Are they even valid, post Bilski?
I know she's tried to make it into an "attack" on the GPL, but... it makes no sense. She essentially argues that we have to support the right of people who write copyright licenses to permit *any* crazy restriction, however ridiculous, because a court might, theoretically do what? Decide that the GPL is too restrictive because it gives people more rights than they have under copyright law? And it ignores the fact that the courts don't care about our support of whatever, nor do they need it in order to rule whichever way they want to. Put another way, it's sort of like saying that we have to be quiet about riding in the back of the bus, because the courts might decide that we have no right to ride on the bus at all. But I think that's wrong, because you'll never get any rights if spend your whole life sitting quietly on the back of the bus.
So she wants us to support IBM. When they're FUDing a company trying to help people use OSI-approved open source software. Using software patents. Forget the pledge. I don't even care whether or not it applies. It doesn't change a thing, legally, when they have so many non-pledged patents.
Whatever. I used to support her, but she's looking for a new crusade these days. Seems like no one told her how the last few turned out...
I read through your old comments, just to see where the "debunking" was.
You... linked to Groklaw. There's not much debunking. Almost everything else you said was some kind of insult. Or it told him to read the article, even though he wrote long replies that you avoided addressing any of the issues raised by. You never actually understood his argument. He's talking about the patents and so you say that the copyrights are the real problem. Then he tells you there's more than one problem (i.e. both of them create legal issues) and then you talk past him for many, many posts, because you never want to address whatever he's talking about.
But after all your talk about "insubstantiated" arguments, your only source cited that I could find was a Groklaw article that he responded to. But maybe my eyes glazed over after the millionth time you wrote "go away" and I missed something. I guess you don't have time to respond fully or something. Except that you clearly have enough time to follow this guy like a stalker. No, seriously, I can look at your comment history and compare it to his pretty easily. It doesn't help to understand your arguments, though, because you always lead people on dead ends, when you bother to cite anything at all.
Why don't we take an example of that dead-ending from this very post for illustration? You say "I guess I should pull up old comments again, where you are clearly the party to this entire scenario."
What's there, exactly? An old SCO story that has no visible connection to Florian Meuller at all. Wait... but there is a "Florian Weimer" there, who posts quite a bit. You do realize that those are DIFFERENT people... right? Hell, Florian itself is a common name. Even Florian Meuller is a common name (not unlike, say, "Pamela Jones"). But I can't find any comments from Florian Meuller over there, let alone a "connection", unless someone mod-bombed them down to -1. So maybe you can help us figure out what this alleged connection is, rather than give us a "go look over here" type of answer because you don't have time to explain what we're even looking for.
As far as I can tell, you're just some guy who stalks Florian Meuller (and possibly anyone else named Florian) on Slashdot and tells them to go away endlessly. No, seriously. Do you have ANY idea how many times you've posted the words 'go away'?
Incidentally, I've made my arguments elsewhere in this story, such as here. I thought I wouldn't leave you guessing where to find the substance.
The post that I responded to included a quote saying "... just a few days before we filed ... may have violated 173 patents...". That is letter #4. Letter #2 was written months before they filed, and contains no reference at all to '173 patents', just a statement that 'we think it is an infringing platform'. The claim made by the poster that IBM made 'grandiose threatening claims about a number of patents without in any way providing what patents have actually been infringed' is completely false, no matter how you try to spin it.
Yeah I was just joking as I usually do.
Apparently I upset a few Nazis with mod points because I dare make fun of their favorite OS and their leader.
Actually Godwin's law states if you compare someone to Hitler you automatically lose the debate. Not what I did here, neither OS/2 nor Windows 7 was compared to Hitler and they aren't people either but operating systems. All I did was the same thing the comic strip I cited did, but somehow even citing a comic strip to show I was posting a joke and satire in humor, those with mod points are too stupid to get the joke in the first place. What I did say was that OS/2 or Windows 7 would be the type of OS Hitler would make if he had the skills and talents to do so. Nothing was compared to Hitler except the cartoon, but I did it different and instead of comparing OS/2 or Windows 7 to Hitler I joked that he would write such a thing had he the ability and skills to do so. That means I wrote that he didn't have such skills and needed others to do that work for him.
Yeah Marice Strong and others order people around to do stuff for them, and I won't compare them to Hitler but Charles Manson, Jim Jones, or even the Anti-Christ, or Dilbert's Pointy haired Boss.
Nope no violation of Godwin's law here, the ref blows the whistle, "Foul on the side of the moderators and PolygamousRanchKid, 5 yard penalty, ball on Orion's team's possession, first down, 10 yards to go."
Apparently they mods ignored my signature, they disagree and snice there is no -1 disagree option they used the -1 flamebait mod instead even if it was not flamebait and you did not flame back as usually happens, thus if you didn't flame back, it logically cannot be flamebait then. Because flamebait is supposed to attract flames and start a flame war, and no such thing happened.
But hey I get used to this because most stuff I type goes over other people's heads and so they confuse it for flamebait and other stuff. Thanks for playing guys, your IQ must be at least 150 to get these posts of mine, also you need t have a good sense of humor and pick up on clues that I meant it as a joke like citing a comic strip that is funny and related to what I posted being a clue it was a joke and satire. But if the same stuff was done on "Family Guy" or 'Robot Chicken" you would laugh your rear ends off because you secretly hate me for being mentally ill and talking above your level of understanding. :) LOL!
Now see the smiley face and LOL markings, it was a joke Herbert, get a clue next time. :) ROR!
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Those statements were made at different times. The fact of whether or not IBM had yet identified the patents in question changed during that time.
If I said "Sarah Palin is not the president of the USA", would you call me a liar if she were later elected?
No, but I do think you are a liar if you say the statement "We think that mimicking IBM's proprietary, 64-bit System Z architecture requires IBM intellectual property, and you will understand that IBM could not be reasonably asked to consider licensing it's operating systems for use on infringing platforms," is in any way making "grandiose threatening claims about the number of patents infringed". That first statement is the ENTIRE statement about 'infringement' from letter #2.
The simple fact is that IBM NEVER made any claims, grandiose, threatening, or otherwise about patents or the number thereof except in letter #4, where they DID provide a list of all the patents.
Nobody asked you Jay if Microsoft was paying you. The question was to Florian, and I note he has not answered.
I think that speaks volumes.
As for TurboHercules, it still isn't an open source company, no matter what it uses. And the IBM patent pledge was only to open source, not companies like TH. A lot of FUD has issued from you guys. Hence the question to Florian, which I'd still like answered. Is Microsoft paying him? If he won't answer, why don't you tell us?