DOJ investigating IBM for possible anti-trust violations.

Post #315,264 by Another Scott 10/7/09 7:04:06 PM Reply	DOJ investigating IBM for possible anti-trust violations. It's deja vu all over again... http://www.nytimes.c...rust.html?_r=1&hp The Department of Justice has started a preliminary investigation into whether I.B.M. abused its monopoly position in the market for the mainframe computers, which remain vital to many of the worldÂs largest businesses. Earlier this month, antitrust regulators at the Justice Department began seeking information about I.B.M.Âs business practices from companies that compete with I.B.M. in the market for large-scale computer hardware and software, according to people who have been contacted. The requests for information followed a complaint filed by the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group with a history of involvement in antitrust disputes. The organization, which is backed by I.B.M. competitors like Microsoft and Oracle, claims that I.B.M. stymied competition in the mainframe market and blocked attempts by competitors and potential partners to license I.B.M.Âs software. [...] The investigation remains in the early stages and may not result in charges against I.B.M. The last time federal regulators pursued an antitrust suit against I.B.M. in the mainframe market, the result was a humbling setback for the Justice Department, when the Reagan administration dropped the case in 1982, after 13 years. [...] I wonder if things will turn out differently this time. Cheers, Scott.
Post #315,266 by folkert 10/7/09 7:50:10 PM Reply	Lets hope the DOJ works as hard to SLAM IBM as the did... Microsoft. Poor IBM is in for it... I'm sure that "gay slap" on the hands will hurt! FYI. Microsoft still has yet to comply.
Post #315,414 by mhuber 10/10/09 2:34:22 AM Reply	If I recall correctly, the last time they did this to IBM, the result was that Microsoft went beyond Mrs. Gates's kid playing with electronics in the garage. The version I recall is that IBM contracted with young Bill to steal DOS from some other guy because they couldn't use an in-house OS due to an anti-trust settlement with the DOJ.
Post #315,423 by boxley 10/10/09 9:37:07 AM Reply	naw, the cpm crowd needed to go surfing and cancelled a meet with ibm when a little dork snuck in and presented the already stolen dos version I heard
Post #315,425 by Andrew Grygus 10/10/09 12:39:03 PM Reply	A little more complex than that. The best that has been pieced together is that Garry Kildall was in Japan negotiating a contract when IBM came by. IBM was asked to negotiate with Kildall's wife. She was the correct officer to negotiate with, but IBM didn't negotiate with women back then and it made them uncomfortable. Mrs. Kildall found the contract IBM offered so totally one-sided she couldn't sign it and turned it over to legal for an opinion. This further infuriated IBM. There was also a rumored undercurrent behind all this, that Garry Kildall had had an affair with an IBM executive's wife. In the IBM culture of the time this made it nearly impossible to adopt Kildall's operating system. Meanwhile, IBM was negotiating with Gates for Basic. They asked him if he could also supply an operating system. With no product whatever and no operating system experience, he said "Yes", and with absolutely nothing to loose he signed whatever contract IBM put forward. He figuring he'd re-negotiate it latter when deadlines were close and he had plenty of leverage. Microsoft then bought a partially completed 16-bit knock-off of CP/M from Seattle Computers. IBM ended up having to finish DOS themselves because Microsoft simply didn't have the skills needed to complete it in time. Digital Research sued and won (with a gag order as part of the settlement). This is why they were able to produce DR-DOS, because the settlement included the rights to clone MS/IBM DOS. IBM eventually offered CP/M as an alternative on the IBM PC, but priced it so high nobody would buy it when DOS was so cheap. Incidentally, you can still buy CP/M-80 with legal license and full documentation from California Digital - http://www.cadigital.com/software.htm
Post #315,491 by mhuber 10/12/09 9:20:28 AM Reply	But the reason DOS wasn't IBM in-house was a DOJ anti-trust settlement, right?
Post #315,493 by Andrew Grygus 10/12/09 10:19:19 AM Reply	Re: But the reason DOS wasn't IBM in-house This is an open question. Anti-trust might have been a factor, but it might not have been. First of all, IBM didn't expect to sell more than a few PCs, but wanted to have one to complete their product line - so there wouldn't really be an anti-trust angle. Since they didn't expect to sell many they gave creating it to a low budget project with little oversight - and that's what made it a success. Don Estridge, the guy in charge, decided to use cheap, existing third party technology and do as little expensive development as possible. Most importantly, he looked at what made the Apple II wildly successful - an open architecture and third party participation. Basically, he cloned the Apple II with somewhat more modern components. At the same time Steve Jobs was looking at things differently. He said, "Look at all those people making money on the Apple II. That money is rightfully Apple's. This must never happen again". The rest, as they say, is history.
Post #315,496 by boxley 10/12/09 10:37:26 AM Reply	alex may have more info, he was in on a lot of it
Post #315,741 by a6l6e6x 10/16/09 3:42:19 PM Reply	Nah! Not in on it. I did buy the original PC on an employee deal for over $3K. 4.8 MHz 8088 with 16 KB memory (upgraded immediately to 64 KB with third party chips) and one sided 5.25" diskette drive and, of course, PC-DOS v1.0. Later, I did get to visit Digital Research and even see (but not talk to) Gary Kildall when my group was looking at an alternative to then nascent OS/2. For our purposes, the DR team was head and shoulders above what IBM guys were doing at the time. Politics prevented that path from getting anywhere. Interestingly, the top financial guy for the original PC group just died last month here in Charlotte. I met him while camping with a local RV group he was trying join. We talked about some about our IBM careers and his association with the original PC group was the highlight for him. He was not a "techie", however. Alex
Post #315,515 by crazy 10/12/09 3:26:00 PM Reply	I tried those mainframe emulators in the past We had recent mainframe that had cost us $700,000 for the main CPU. We could have easily run our total corporate workload on a PC at the time. I seem to recall that Xeons and Opterons were out for a while. 1/2 a Xeon was plenty emulate a full Z1 CPU. When I tried to determine true cost, I got hit with the OS license that IBM would not give us for less than about double the cost of the "real" mainframe. There was simply no point in looking at any of these devices once you take OS licensing costs into mind. Some are sold as backup for when your mainframe fails, but never for real corporate workload that requires a recent OS license from IBM.
Post #315,530 by static 10/12/09 7:03:27 PM Reply	That was one thing they got right. Licensing the software, not selling it. By chance, many years ago, I saw a microchannel card that IBM had made that basically a mainframe on a card. I don't know why our guys were looking at it, but I have little doubt that IBM had inferred it was a toy and not to be taken seriously. I imagine it's goal was for system-level development tasks that needed the equivalent of a physical mainframe, which I'm fairly sure my employer at the time would have had no use for (it was a bank). We had a lot of people who looked down at all hardware that wasn't The Mainframe. :-) Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.

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