RE: Re: News - Commercial Version of Hercules - Turbo Hercules

>I am not familiar with timing issues. As was pointed
>out (I think), they appear to have filed the patent 
>years after the instruction was created and people
>were already emulating it. But even assuming that
>their timing is acceptable, and they're allowed to
>patent something after people have spent a lot of
>effort creating it - WHAT OTHER FRIGGIN CHOICE
>IS THERE TO MAKE A COMPATIBLE MACHINE TO RUN Z/OS
>AND ITS APPLICATIONS??? IBM asserting this is
>simply saying "we don't want any competition for
>our hardware, so you can't run z/OS software on
>anything other than our hardware".

Well at this point in time yes. The reasons there were Plug Compatible
Mainframes was because IBM was covered by Anti-Trust legislation which
required it to license and documents its systems and interfaces. These days
that is no longer the case, and at present IBM has not only refused to
license any emulator to run 64-bit code, but it refused to renew FunSofts
licenses for Flex effectively rendering many IBM CUSTOMERS investment in in
null and void. It also bought PSI to avoid licensing code to them, and is in
litigation with Neon over the use of speciality engines for running
non-authorized code..

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/15/neon_zprime_ibm_lawsuit/

If you follow the threads on IBM-MAIN and IBMVM lists you will see that many
people on there believe that there is something fundamentally different
about the way z Series mainframes are built which makes them more reliable,
and therefore have a higher business value. If it allowed emulation IBM
would be sending out "mixed messages" so it bans them.

>You literally may as well be living in North Korea
>when your only choice of hardware is the one that
>Kim Jong Il gives you.

I think that's closer to the truth than you realize. In this wonderful
modern world it's the hype and spin that's important not the content. To
re-work an old saying, never mind the quality feel the advertising. Just
look at the queues for the Apple "slate" if you need evidence of this. How
many in the queue know why they need a slate. I think much of the current
paranoia over Copyright isn't about Copyright "per say" its about
controlling "when" we watch things. This allows companies to have "limited
time offers" etc...

This is also why I think software patents are a BAD THING and why the Free
Software Foundation are right to have the extra crap in the new CopyLeft
agreements. Contesting and defending Copyright is relatively easy. Defending
or contesting a Patent is much more expensive and unproductive. I bet that
it won't be long before IBM has more patent lawyers on its payroll than
hardware development engineers. (I think it has had more lawyers for a long
time). In fact I see that recently rather than outsource IT India has
started to outsource legal work. Interesting...

Dave
Illegitimi Non Carborundum