OS/360 and VM/370 were public domain. It wasn't until VM/SP that IBM charged for its VM system and, thereby took it out of the public domain. Amdahl was never sued for building a VM based on VM/370. Jerry DePass liked to tell the story about receiving a package from Dewayne Hendricks, marked with the Amdahl logo. He took it unopened to the legal department where the lawyer's opened it. Inside was a VM/470 manual.
-----Original Message----- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Boyes Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2006 7:25 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: IBM sues PSI > How does PSI differ from amdahl, NAS, Hitachi and other IBM compatible > hardware vendors from the past? Speculation: (IANAL) 1) The historical vendors legitimately licensed some of the technology from IBM or independently developed compatible widgets to the IBM stuff published in the PoP without any reference to the real stuff. The independent development route is probably impossible for any organization that doesn't have a research arm on the scale of IBM's, and if they did, they'd have to worry about #2 below given the screwed-up state of patent law these days. 2) There's a lot more patentable and actually patented stuff in the current machines. Unless PSI's IP lawyers did their homework VERY carefully, it's pretty likely they missed something. 3) At least part of the contention appears to be related to OS/390 and z/OS code. Part of having patents and/or trademarks is that you have to actively pursue them or you are deemed to have released them into the public domain. Losing control of the OS/390 and/or z/OS IP that way would be catastrophic, so they're enabling and deploying the nuclear device that is IBM Legal to protect the bigger cash cow that is z/OS by rendering a small annoyance into a pile of smoking rubble. Personally, I'd expect an out-of-court settlement with undisclosed terms. PSI doesn't have the resources to resist that level of legal assault, and there's clearly some technically legal but pretty gray areas in what they're doing.
