IBM breaks the taboo and betrays its promise to the FOSS community

After years of pretending to be a friend of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), IBM now shows its true colors. IBM breaks the number one taboo of the FOSS community and shamelessly uses its patents against a well-respected FOSS project, the Hercules mainframe emulator.

A reliable source close to the Hercules project has provided me with this letter that Mark Anzani, IBM's mainframe CTO, recently sent to TurboHercules SAS, a French startup founded by Roger Bowler, who started the Hercules project 11 years back. The letter comes with a "non-exhaustive" list including 106 IBM patents plus 67 pending patent applications.

This is so appalling that I felt compelled to show to the FOSS community what IBM is doing: IBM is using patent warfare in order to protect its highly lucrative mainframe monopoly against Free and Open Source Software. Read more...