-----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gabe Goldberg Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 1:42 PM To: [email protected] Subject: web: Global CIO: As IBM Preps For Justice's Probe, Who Started This Nonsense? -- ...
Here's a slant on this... The bureaucrats at the Justice Dept., the European Commission, and a trade group called CCIA are looking to take from IBM what their supposed "victim" could not earn in the free market. http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jh tml?articleID=220600671 <SNIP> Au Contraire! IBM's changing of the rules stopped Fundamental Software's FLEX-ES offering (any one able to buy one and get a new copy of z/OS to run on it?). They had machines out there, they were running, IBM was licensing their operating systems for use on them and then pulled the rug. T3 Technologies (T3T) was selling (IIRC) FLEX-ES machines (made by Fundamental Software) to the bottom end of the mainframe user world. Suddenly, their market was taken from them. And I thought they were planning on selling PSI systems, which is why they joined the lawsuit that PSI brought. So when IBM bought PSI, to the court (from where I sit, and not being a lawyer) T3T's arguments became moot (because T3T was not a PCM?). Now to the arguments made about IBM not gaining the reward from the R&D they had done. How many patents does IBM have licensed from Fujitsu that were the results of Amdahl's R&D? How about HDS? Siemans etc.? Granted, those patents may have expired by now. Continuing down this road, if IBM publishes the specifications of its hardware (Principles of Operations comes to mind), and someone were to develop a system that implements those standards, what harm has come to IBM? IBM, knowing what they do within their SCPs (System Control Programs, A/K/A, Operating Systems) may not (and does not) publish all the instructions that their equipment implements. So that the system that is built on the basis of the Principles of Operations for z/Architecture will be UNABLE to run an IBM SCP. Now licensing of IBM IP is needed. Even at that rate, IBM is sufficiently ahead of the game that doing what Amdahl used to do (x% faster for y% less $$ for similar IBM model) is nigh unto impossible at this juncture. So, since IBM is leaving the bottom of the market behind, the opening is really there for the small shops that IBM apparently isn't interested in marketing to. This then, is where the market was, from my perspective, for the PCMs at this point. And IBM has shut the door on them. What would the costs be to IBM for their software? Well, since IBM has offloaded marketing and support to their Tier 1 (Tier 2 partners are now gone in the z/Series world), not much. IBM would be getting the income from the licensing as they have specified it and the maintenance charges as they have specified it. If the market share for IBM's z/OS were to increase, would IBM's profit drop because the support demand would go up more than the revenue? Or would this wind up being the seeds to companies growing and needing to move from smaller systems to larger systems specifically made by IBM? Lastly, an argument was raised that didn't get answered (to my knowledge). Is IBM charging their patent license fee(s) with the purchase of their hardware, or their software, or both? If it is both, isn't that a double dip situation that makes their patents null and void? One might look at the research/documentation done by Phil Payne (http://www.isham-research.co.uk/ibm_vs_psi.html) As you can see, this is not so cut and dried. Regards, Steve Thompson -- Opinions expressed by this poster may not reflect those of poster's employer -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
