IBM patents, shooting themselves in the foot

Here's a quote by someone who signs himself "Friend of Hercules"
posted on the Wall Street Journal's "Real Time Brussels" blog.
I think he summarises the situation very neatly:
 
"Sure, it makes sense that IBM doesn’t want people to run their
mainframe software on cheap Intel boxes instead of IBM’s gold-plated
gear. But the fact is IBM has been neglecting the smaller mainframers
who have the most to gain from emulators for years. Hercules is trying
to serve customers IBM doesn’t want to bother with. And I bet when all
is said and done it will turn out that Hercules isn’t even violating
any IBM patents. Everybody knows IBM tries to patent everything it can
think of (including ideas that are really obvious or that have already
been done by others) with the express purpose of building up a huge
patent portfolio that they can then use to intimidate competitors.
They might very well succeed in crushing TurboHercules with these
threats. But if they do, they’re shooting themselves in the foot,
because Hercules will keep people on the mainframe rather than driving
them away. Remember, TurboHercules is only asking that customers be
allowed the privilege of paying IBM good money to run IBM mainframe
operating systems on the Hercules emulator. Maybe the part of IBM that
makes its living selling mainframe software should be scratching its
head right now and asking whether its brethren over at the mainframe
hardware division know what they are doing."
- http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2010/04/06/an-open-question-about-a-pledge/


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Regards,
Roger Bowler
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/rbowler
Hercules "the people's mainframe"