CA Sues Over DB2 Migration Tool 104
aesoteric writes "Software giant CA has filed suit against an Australian software developer over a program that allegedly enabled companies to migrate off CA database platforms onto IBM DB2. It claimed the software 'reproduced' portions of confidential source and object codes without permission and deprived CA of license fees. CA also disputed claims that its database platform was 'dying.'"
Lock in (Score:5, Insightful)
So now we have lock-in as a respected business practice? What is next? Making it illegal for your users to even look at products of your competitors?
What this continues to tell us... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the weight of these patents were different (as in, if the patent system wasn't out of touch with modern applications of software and technology), they wouldn't have so much leverage over each other, and maybe we could get back to innovating instead of litigating.
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow...from the Wikipedia article I went to the product's homepage, and most of it is filled up with a big blue box that has a two sentence blurb that invites you to click more to get ... a few more sentences, emphasizing its ODBC and JDBC connections. The rest of the page seems to be general support and contact stuff. Pretty sad product homepage.
Barrier to Exit strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
This has been a cornerstone of CA strategy for decades, nothing new here. Makes for a predictable renewal revenue stream.
Re:Barrier to Exit strategy (Score:1, Insightful)
Still being used today, Apple are the masters at it now, look how phenomenally well it's worked for them over the last 6 years or so.
Second most popular CA search (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Assume it's in the mainframe world (Score:3, Insightful)
Step 5: Say goodbye to business continuity
You do have a point - DR and recovery processes tend to be better tested in big mainframe environments, and the environment is often more contained; restore the mainframe and you have all you need.
Moving off to midrange or smaller systems and it's a lot easier to end up with a mess of peripheral systems without the same level of simplicity or control (like discovering that some idiot is storing data on the Citrix server...)
Re:Uh... (Score:2, Insightful)
It is possible that they did use CA's JDBC driver and that doing so is precisely the problem. CA may perhaps be claiming that the JDBC driver (or ODBC driver) for their database was used contrary to the licensing agreement.
I hope that this is not the case, for if it is, and if they prevail, then the ramifications are considerable.
Re:migrating to a dying platform? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ummm ... since when??? If you need to process data in industrial quantities, DB2 on the mainframe is an excellent solution. The big advantage of the mainframe version of DB2 has been data sharing (think Oracle RAC on steroids). This technology has recently been extended to Wintel, Linux and Power environments. DB2 is being actively developed, with new features which redefine the cutting edge.
MySQL is a great database which can be used to solve some amazing large problems (look at Wikipedia). However, it has some major limitations. It is great for powering web sites which only need SELECT's and INSERT's. It has no warehouse or BI features at all. Most large commercial DB problems are difficult to solve with MySQL.