Hercules (IBM emulator) under threat?

arcarlini at iee.org wrote: It is important to observe that there is a huge distinction between Hercules, an open-source project, and TurboHercules, a commercial entity selling a commercial, non-open-source software package derived from Hercules. They're not yet "going after" anyone; so far they're only defending their decision not to sell licenses to their proprietary operating systems for use on TurboHercules' commercial, non-open-source version of Hercules. The TurboHercules people wrote a snotty letter to IBM along the lines of "nyah, nyah, we can use your processor architecture because it isn't patented", and IBM pointed out that they do in fact have a bunch of patents on it, which TurboHercules *might* be infringing. IBM hasn't actually outright threatened or sued anyone yet, though the implication is that if TurboHercules really goes forward with suing IBM in the EU, then IBM may sue TurboHercules for patent infringement. IBM hasn't said anything about suing the Hercules developers. IBM in the past has offered some kind of covenant not to sue open source projects for use of a particular set of IBM patents, which may include some but not all of the patents they listed in their reply to TurboHercules. Anyhow, I'm not a lawyer, and this is just my take on it after looking into it relatively briefly. Eric