“Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice opened a 50-year-old can of legal worms: the question of whether IBM’s mainframe business, which is estimated to generate as much as a quarter of the company’s revenues, represents an anti-competitive monopoly,” Andy Greenberg reports for Forbes.

“IBM’s critics have been loud enough: The Computer and Communications Industry Association, a consortium of companies that includes Microsoft, Google and Red Hat, requested the DOJ’s investigation and claims that IBM has locked its mainframe customers into an overpriced IT system where it has complete control of both hardware and software. They say this stifles competitors that offer cheaper, more flexible options,” Greenberg reports.

“The CCIA’s central complaint against IBM is that it holds back the sale of its mainframe software to other IT companies whenever it perceives a threat to its supposed monopoly. Firms like T3 Technologies, Platform Solutions (PSI) and an open source project known as ‘Hercules’ have all attempted to build systems that could run the same functions as IBM’s mainframes, often on far cheaper hardware,” Greenberg reports.

“Apple, of course, refuses to license its operating system to competitors, even going as far as suing Miami-based Psystar, a small firm attempting to install and sell the Apple operating system on non-Apple hardware,” Greenberg reports. “The government hasn’t questioned Apple’s right to refuse its software to a company that could potentially sell a cheaper version of Apple’s product. ‘Apple would never give Mac OS to anyone, and no one would ever think to sue them for that,’ says Brad Day, a mainframe-focused analyst with Forrester Research.”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Eric24601" for the heads up.]