THE story we wrote about this morning is spreading to news sites. Here is some coverage of interest:
The letter includes a "non-exhaustive" list of 106 IBM patents and 67 pending patent applications. Mueller found that on examining the list, two of the patents mentioned in the letter, 5613086 and 5220669 are among the five hundred patents in the IBM patent pledgePDF. Mueller says "This betrayal of the promise is unbelievable, but I never believed that IBM was sincere about that pledge in the first place". He calls for regulatory intervention against IBM and points out that TurboHercules had already lodged anti-trust complaint with the European Commission.
IBM certainly has some explaining to do. It needs to make clear where it stands on open source, and where on software patents. It needs to understand that the two are not compatible, and that it cannot truly be a friend of the former while deploying the latter as weapons against free software, even when the victims sit on the latter's fringe rather than at its heart. After such a long and mutually beneficial relationship, it would be sad if IBM decides that it prefers software patents to open source – and ultimately to its detriment.
For people reading this page from Slashdot, I have to confess that IBM is still lobbying for software patents in the European Union though the creation of a central patent court. IBM, like Microsoft, is actively lobbying in Brussels not to reopen the software patent directive through the Community Patent discussions, and the creation of a central patent court.
Software developer and political lobbyist Florian Mueller weighed in on the European Commission's investigation of monopoly abuse claims against IBM, accusing the computing giant of deserting the interests of the open-source software community.
Fresh off his humiliating defeat at the hands of Oracle, Florian Mueller is now tilting at IBM, accusing it of open source treason for trying to enforce a monopoly it won before he was born.
[...]
The question is just how much IBM credibility might be lost as a result of TurboHercules. Mueller wants to make certain it’s a lot.
Comments
Yuhong Bao
2010-04-07 01:23:04
Chips B. Malroy
2010-04-07 04:50:05
Looking at Groklaw today, its news pick on the right hand side gives us this link:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/26/ibm_turbohercules_response/
Quote: "TurboHercules is a member of organizations founded and funded by IBM competitors such as Microsoft to attack the mainframe. Such an anti-trust accusation is not being driven by the interests of consumers and mainframe customers - who benefit from intellectual property laws and the innovation that they foster - but rather by entities that seek to use governmental intervention to advance their own commercial interests." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Although, I suspect the story is much deeper than this.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2010-04-07 06:35:47
Agent_Smith
2010-04-07 15:29:59
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2010-04-07 15:51:34
What complicates it is that there could be precursors to the antitrust complaint and the nastygram.
I'll do another post soon. TurboHercules has been trying to get in touch with me several times, but I avoid them. They are helping Microsoft.
Regardless of the circumstances, IBM should not pull software patents out of the holster.
Agent_Smith
2010-04-07 16:07:30
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2010-04-07 16:10:56