Platform Solutions Inc. (PSI) has opened up a European front in its war against IBM. The start-up, which makes Itanium-based servers capable of running mainframe software, has lobbed a complaint at the European Commission, charging IBM with abusing a mainframe monopoly, according to media reports. The complaint was apparently …

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Thursday 20th December 2007 10:38 GMT Steve Browne

Have we seen this sort of thing elsewhere ?

Were IBM involved in many similar case in the 70s for not helping competitors infiltrate their market space. I always loved the comment then that IBM dominated the market for IBM equipment, I mean what bright spot thought that one up all by themselves.

Nice to see the PC guys advancing into the 70s now, they may even catch up one day.

I get a bit tired of this merkin habit of suing someone every time they take THEIR ball away. IBM have spent serious amounts developing their hardware to a point of reliability which is extremely close to 100%. They have redeveloped and funded large projects to port Linux to their hardware, which is no mean feat, seeing as the code set used is EBCDIC and not ASCII.

I think IBM are entitled to the rewards for their efforts, and these prissy merkin prime donne should go develop their own kit. Perhaps they could trawl a museum or two and look for a PC AT/370 (around 1985 vintage) and get into a spot of reverse engineering. It ran VM/SP 4, there is also a P/370 which ran MVS, didnt have z/OS when I had one. I had one in 1998.

As regards putting someone else's OS on your machine, lets get to look at this a little. No OS supplier supports there OS directly when an OEM is involved. Try calling Microsoft, they tell you to go talk to the people who sold you the machine.

I am with IBM on this one.

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Thursday 20th December 2007 13:57 GMT DutchOven

@Steve Browne

Next you'll be telling us that since DOS was developed for "IBM compatibles", Microsoft should drop all support for PCs made by companies other than IBM...?

...and don't think that this isn't an exact parallel with what's happening here.

IBM are (of course) entitled to the fruits of their labours. They're maybe NOT quite as entitled to take away the fruits of their competitor's labours just because they feel like taking them.

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Thursday 20th December 2007 14:31 GMT Matt Bryant

@Steve Browne

Of course, if that IBM hardware that is at a "point of reliability which is extremely close to 100%" is so good and advanced, and so worth the (extortionate) price, then surely IBM would only be too happy to open the market a bit and make some extra money off licences, secure in the knowledge their product is just so gosh-darn perfect that there is no way anybody else could threaten it.....? Or is it that they're worried by a platform that can host multiple OSs in completely electrically-isolated partitions in a manner that no IBM hardware can match, at a lower price point?

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Thursday 20th December 2007 20:04 GMT Anonymous Coward

@ Matt Bryant

Call IBM what you will, but they learned (something -- not much, but something) from letting the PC market get out of their control. I agree with IBM -- if somebody else wants in on their market, they can figure it out for themselves, and stop that infernal whining about being 'entitled' to a competitors intellectual property.

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