Talk:IBM v. TurboHercules in 2010

Great work, Ciaran

Thanks for getting this page started. This is going to turn out to be very interesting. I hope the free software movement is going to hold IBM's feet to the fire. We're paying attention pretty well so far, especially since the mainframe community isn't the bread and butter platform for free software hackers.

What I don't understand is how IBM can suggest that TurboHercules is supported by "competitors". This is no justification. Something they should have learned when they began supporting many free software projects 10 years ago. That's just it, they don't want competition. They don't want to innovate. They want to preserve their monopoly in the mainframe market. This is going to be a big fight. --Ashawley 15:23, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, and thanks for adding to it - more is always welcome. The main things I've to work on at the moment are NZ, Australia, preparing for the Bilski ruling, and a swpat film. This issue just popped up and I couldn't ignore it, but I can't give it much time. The main challenge in documenting it well is to separate the software patent issues from the commercial strategy - many people are being distracted by the fact that IBM contributes code and because IBM say the mainframe is very important to them.

But at the same time, the aggression here is limited (or maybe it was there and recent info is back-pedalling). TurboHercules kinda asked IBM to produce that list of patents, and IBM's letter didn't contain any direct threat. In any case, the publicity of the issue is forcing IBM to define what it meant by it's promises, and that concrete info is certainly useful. (also: Patent promises)

Any more help you (or anyone else who sees this) can provide is very welcome. Ciaran 22:15, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

TurboHercules' license

I think it is important to notice TurboHercules' license was the QPL, a FOS, but very annoying (GPL-incompatible) license, which is not used even by their original creators (TrollTech, now Nokia).

They probably used this license for difficulting reusing of this code in other free software projects, so IBM's reaction is, at least in this case, justified. This issue should be mentioned in the article. What do you think?

--IPanonima 18:26, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for noting this issue. The context can be useful, so having it here on the Talk page is good, but I'd like the article to be limited to the software patent aspects of the affair.

There are other articles that aim to give an overview of who's right and wrong, but I'd like to focus on whether IBM is respecting it's patent promises, what clarifications their statements make regarding those patent promises, how they're using their patents, whether antitrust law be used to limit the harms of software patents, etc. Got any info on those sort of software patent aspects? Ciaran 18:38, 16 June 2010 (UTC)