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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.
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.
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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.
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.
OK, poor choice of words. I completely agree that PJ is impartial and focuses more on facts then anything else.
Do you think her presumed impartiality is corroborated by the fact that during all those years she never criticized anything IBM did, other than disagreeing with them on whether there should be software patents? That she claims to be against software patents but wrote that IBM is free to sue the pants off TurboHercules with patents? It's at the very least conspicuous that she's more loyal to IBM than Rush Limbaugh to the Republican Party.