One door closes and another door closes
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IBM faces antitrust investigation
IBM MIGHT HAVE THOUGHT it escaped US antitrust scrutiny after T3 had its case thown out of court last week, but it would have been wrong.
It turns out that the US Justice Department is investigating allegations that Big Blue abused its dominance of the mainframe business to squeeze rivals out of the market.
The investigation follows a complaint from the Computer and Communications Industry Association.
CCIA chairman Ed Black told Reuters that the CCIA had urged the Justice Department to open the probe.
It claims that IBM withdrew licenses for its operating systems from customers who use non-IBM hardware, retaliated against business partners deemed disloyal, bundled its mainframe operating systems with hardware and acquired mainframe hardware startup PSI to stifle competition.
The CCIA is a non-profit trade group. Its members include Microsoft and Oracle, but not Big Blue.
At the centre of the allegations is the fact that IBM refused to license its mainframe operating systems to users of "Hercules" for installation on machines other than IBM's expensive big iron.
Hercules is open source software that allows IBM's mainframe operating systems to run on x86 machines. µ
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And Herc isn't the only company facing these problems.
Fundamental Software
http://www.funsoft.com/
They used to be an official partner and licensed software and patents from IBM to do something similar with their FLEX-ES software package. Now IBM isn't renewing their license or patents to the company. So not sure what is going on over at IBM Mainframe division, but it sure seems like IBM should be investigated. Because they used to allow one company to do it, now it seems they don't want to allow anyone to do it.
From the article IBM needs to hurry and join the CCIA. With members like microcrap apparently they dont blow the whistle on there own antitrust activities.
They made plug-compatible mainframes competing with IBM in the 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps IBM needs them to get the anti-trust police off their backs...
IBM dominates that market segment, last I checked, Apple wasn't dominant in the OS area (or in the computer HW area)- that is the big (and key) difference.
The concern here is IBM is using it's market dominance to do this, it's not the mere fact of SW being tied to HW.
They've been over-charging S/390 and related applications (TSO & co.) for years.... but only if you didn't own an IBM machine.
Apple will watch this case closely as the implications could affect them as well. If you refuse to allow your OS to run on hardware that isn't yours on the mainframe, how is that any different than the desktop?