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Microsoft Invests In Open Source Software Company
joabj writes "In what may be its first investment in an open source software company, Microsoft has quietly invested in TurboHercules, which maintains the Hercules open source IBM mainframe emulator. Perhaps the potential for purloining customers from the juicy mainframe market outstrips any misgivings Microsoft may have about open source. You might remember TurboHercules: In March, it filed an antitrust complaint with the EU over IBM's tying of its mainframe OSes with its hardware."
A story from earlier this year gives more information on the related conflict between Hercules and IBM over patents.
Perhaps the potential for purloining customers from the juicy mainframe market outstrips any misgivings Microsoft may have about open source.
The only misgivings MS ever had about open source is for the potential it has for giving away what it has always charged money for, thus eroding their profit share. I've often wondered why they don't leverage it to their own advantage more, much like the way they appropriated BSD code for much of their networking utilities, like netstat et al.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Cue "Microsoft is funding TurboHercules lawsuit against IBM" conspiracy theorists in 5... 4... 3...
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
If the courts make IBM give in this could be huge for Microsoft. Turbo Hercules could be used to make an easy migration to Windows. Or maybe Microsoft will make an IBM mainframe compatibility layer like the Posix layar using Turbo Hercules? If you could run your mainframe software on a Windows server things would really start to suck for IBM.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Besides the people behind this case, the case itself is quite interesting too.
The European Commission (or Court of Justice) will have to decide if IBM has harmed TurboHercules through anti-competitive behaviour. IBM has also asserted patents. This means that if the European institutions find that IBM is doing wrong, then they will also have to decide if IBM can use its patents to continue the wrong. I.e. what trumps? Competition law or patents?
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/IBM_and_TurboHercules,_2010
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Competition_law_defence
If competition law trumps, then this opens a new path for breaking down the problems that software patents are doing to standards and interop.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Harm_to_standards_and_compatibility
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Apple ties OSX to it's own hardware and no one argues that is wrong, although I think it is.
Conversely, IBM should invest serious money/time in ReactOS and WINE ... and encourage the liberation of Mono...
IBM should invest serious money/time in ReactOS and WINE ... and encourage the liberation of Mono...
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
While I'm happy Microsoft is investing in open source, I find that their target is fairly suspicious.. what easier way to take on IBM indirectly than to give money to an open source company who is already in conflict with them.
In addition, it's not like Microsoft isn't already trying to embrace open source. You'd be surprised at just how much stuff is released under MS-PL licence. And while that may anger you, as it's their own licence, it's rather free.
As time goes by, most MS senior management will realize that open source is neither good nor bad, but an instrument that can be more useful than closed source under many circumstances.
En un lugar del estado de Washington cuyo nombre quiero olvidar...
Is there anyone online that lets you remote in to a public copy dedicated for educational purposes?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
'First ever investment in an open-source company' - really? What about the money they pumped into SCO (for mostly the same reason).
Already two steps and you all know what the next step is.
You can get accounts on them for fairly reasonable prices, but you're essentially buying time as a user. From what I've seen it's more useful for developers who want a machine to code on when they're aware from work. From a system administrator perspective, you just don't have the access capabilities to learn how to do things like OS upgrades and the like.
For Unix comparison, it'd be like being given an account on a machine with no root access. You can code, run apps, etc, but no fiddling with the setup.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Isn't apple tying their OS to their hardware (via their licensing terms). Is that also illegal in the EU? And yet in the US, it seems that Apple can take companies to court for using their software on hardware that Apple doesn't want you using their software on.
Warren
Apache is the most notable example. Microsoft fight copyleft (GPL) by supporting projects that use permissive licenses, open-source software distributed under permissive license could not compete with corporations.
Bruce Perence explained this two years ago: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3762786/Bruce-Perens-Microsoft-and-Apache---Whats-the-Angle.htm
M$.. investing in open source.. good.. evil.. must.. classify.. DOES NOT COMPUTE!
IBM hold a student Mainframe contest every year. I've taken part for the last three years and it's not too bad. I can never be bothered to finish the second task though. I don't really like how structured the environment is. If I could just go play with a mainframe from the word go it would be much more interesting; install, break, install, break... Which is how I learned UNIX, the Mac (twice), Linux and obviously Windows.
> You know this has been decided before in favor of IBM.
Oh? Got a link?
My understanding was, as is mentioned in the story summary:
"You might remember TurboHercules: In March, it filed an antitrust complaint with the EU over IBM's tying of its mainframe OSes with its hardware."
I.e. no decision has been taken.
If you can give a link to show it's been decided, I'll be happy to admit I wasn't up to date on the case.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Like the fact that TurboHercules is no more an open source company than Oracle is.
The open souce project Hercules was started around 1999. TurboHercules was started in 2009.
Last I looked TurboHercules did not sell Hercules but sold systems on which hercules ran on.
So if Dlink used linux in it's routers and Microsoft invested in Dlink would it be investing in a linux company?
I think not.
On top of that, Microsoft is not investing in TurboHercules to help develop Hercules, rather it is investing In TurboHercules to help it fund lawsuots against IBM, the same way Microsoft invested in SCO.
"Disregard" that: "I" suck "cock" 4U!
APK
Microsoft's entire IP stack is based off the BSD model
It's a very old factoid that became an enduring myth a long time ago. It was really only true back in the days of Windows NT 3.1, the TCP/IP stack for which was a third-party implementation bought by MS. That one was mostly BSD-derived. Since then, however, it was rewritten from scratch (several times, in fact), and NT 3.5 and 95 already included that rewritten version, which is not derived from BSD.
However, the original userland utilities (nslookup, ftp, telnet, a bunch of other stuff) were originally BSD-derived and remain such. That's where the strings "Berkeley" etc (which are usually used as a proof of BSD derivation) come from. So GP is absolutely correct.
Hereis a more detailed treatment of this.
"In what may be its first investment in an open source software company
HUMM........Microsoft invested heavily in NOVEL.....SuSe LINUX? And Everyone on slashdot picked the sale of Novel apart specifically the details about MS Investment. Now everyone wants to play dumb as if this is NEWS? IDIOTS.
""Disregard" that: "I" suck "cock" 4U!
APK" - by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 02, @05:44PM (#34424470)
Per my subject-line above: Ordinarily I don't feed trolls, even ones that like to impersonate me (5th time in 3 days now), & it's amusing to watch the fool doing so waste his time on it. It's not fooling anyone & it's not like I don't see it!
Keep wasting your time, it's your life.
APK
P.S.=> LMAO - & my posts were "modded down", doubtless by this effete impersonator of myself in this troll (via his doubtless numerous registered user accounts here), but I don't give a hoot about "mod points" or "karma" that much anyhow, OR, I'd be a "registered user" here (and you can clearly see, that I am not)... apk
My company uses IBM mainframes and trying to get in and out of our databases is a nightmare - they're not relational, they're often CA Datacom (see the recent CA copyright story on Slashdot). There seems to be an increasing amount of companies that are building integration at the UI layer, i.e. they have a product that can recognise various IDs in a terminal emulator and then bring up a side panel on your desktop that links in information related to it. Example: looking at a customer on your mainframe system through a standard terminal emulator on Screen X, the third party program recognises you're on Screen X, picks up the ID and brings up all the customer information from your Siebel DB in a side panel.
Client level integration with your competitors' closed systems: cheaper as long as you have a way of getting into the client of your competitor.
With this acquisition, Microsoft go from Windows integration to mainframe. That gets them into most of the key systems of the Fortune 500, if it's good enough.
"It's a very old factoid that became an enduring myth a long time ago. It was really only true back in the days of Windows NT 3.1, the TCP/IP stack for which was a third-party implementation bought by MS. That one was mostly BSD-derived." - by shutdown -p now (807394) on Thursday December 02, @05:50PM (#34424564)
That's where I was "coming from", but some of the sources in my search query also said it was the same for Windows 2000 (in beta, which IS possible).
I say it was possible, especially during beta for Win2k, because Windows 2000 was the "Direct Descendant" of Windows NT (of which you note now, good post by the by, if I forget to say it, on YOUR part).
I know that the IP stack altered, substantially, in Windows 2000 (when TCP/IP took over vs. LanManager/NetBIOS based communication being the default before that in NT 4.x downwards as one major change as an example thereof), so you're probably correct that it's now "Microsoft Code" via a rewrite... but from myself having written millions of lines of code in my time, I can tell you right now, that I severely SEVERELY doubt it's a "COMPLETE REWRITE" because it works the same for the MOST part (boot up turn on of the IP stack changed since 2000 too, it kicks on FULLY once a user or the system makes an internet bound/IP bound call from Windows XP onwards, as an example for that much also)...
I.E.-> You might be surprised how little is truly "complete rewrites" out there that says it is, & mainly because most coders use prebuilt routines they have stashed over time, that came from WHO KNOWS WHERE, usually code from books adapted has been something!
Thanks for the link too - I can use it in the future during posts like this one I suppose, as a reference.
He's correct, the GP, as you said... I never said he wasn't, but I did want to point out that the IP Stack had BSD roots is all (historical trivia type thing).
APK
P.S.=> Nice post shutdown -p now - if I had "mod points"? I'd give you an upwards mod, but alas, I do not (I don't keep a registered user account here)... apk
...that companies that can afford to run mainframe systems would still be running some 1970/80's app that could have been migrated to a low-end platform would still be running it on a mainframe?
Your naievety and ignorance is astonishing.
And FYI development load on a z/OS mainframe is a flea bite on an elephant. We're not talking about crappy *nix boxen here.
You realize your only proof is speculation that is 10 years and three full OS versions old, right?
That's about as weak as you can get.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I found that thread enlightening.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
While you sometimes have valid points, your style is quite... unique, and that's made it prone to mockery, unfortunately. An account wouldn't be the worst idea, even if you don't care about mod points or any of the rest of it. After all, signing your AC posts kind of defeats the point of posting as AC.
Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
I don't need an account its not like anyone could fake being me.
APK
"TurboHercules SAS (“TurboHercules”) operates the TurboHercules.com Web site. You have the right to use the Web site and download material from this Web site for your personal, noncommercial use. Material may be purchased and downloaded for commercial use, subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable end user license agreement link
"The Q Public License (QPL) is a non-copyleft license, created by Trolltech for its free edition of the Qt. It is incompatible with the GPL, meaning that you cannot legally distribute products derived from both GPL'ed and QPL'ed code link
IBM should take a leaf from the Microsoft litigation manual and threaten to sue TurboHercules end users.
They aren't investing in the company because it's open source, they are investing in a company that just happens to release their product as open source.