Sunday, July 24, 2011

IBM LEGAL VICTORY CRUSHES NEON'S JPRIME FEE-DODGING SOFTWARE


On May 31 IBM obtained a permament injunction barring Neon from selling its zPrime product, software that enabled many general-purpose mainframe jobs to run on specialty engines. Once moved, these jobs let users dodge software charges based on the use of general purpose computing capacity. The technical tricks were, as IBM seems to have shown, a violation of IBM's policies and practices and a breach of IBM's mainframe software licensing agreement. Game over.

The injunction appears to permit users of the jPrime product to continue running the code under the terms of their contracts with Neon. Neon appears to be obliged to do everything it can to unwind these deals short of defaulting on its obligations.

The personnel behind jPrime are specifically prohibited from using their knowhow to outfox IBM. They are also enjoined from sharing or making public their understanding of the IBM software that attempts to govern and meter workloads on IBM mainframes. Basically, IBM found a legal solution to the problems posed by jPrime but from the looks of things Big Blue could not come up with a technical remedy for the bill-beating technology.

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