gerh...@valley.net (Gerhard Postpischil) writes: > In the sixties, IBM was sued by Applied Data Research for distributing > free software (purportedly) similar to what ADR wanted to sell (ROSCOE > vs. IBM's CRBE/CRJE). The outcome was IBM's decision to charge for all > software other than the base system. In the seventies, a company a > friend of mine refers to as Jujitsu took the entire MVS system code, > removed all copyright statements, removed all references to IBM, made > some minor changes, and sold the resulting system with its own > hardware. IBM's response, other than a court case, was to restrict all > source code (other than HASP/JES2) from distribution, and to cease > making the optional source and fiche available. They referred to this > as Object Code Only (OCO). A result is a lack of needful information > in manuals, as you noted. Some of us look through dumps, and trace > execution flow, to figure out what is happening, but that's a gray > area, as IBM's standard contracts prohibit reverse engineering.
23jun69 unbundling announcement starting to charge for application software, SE services, etc (made case that kernel/operating system was still free). misc. past posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle in the early 70s, there was Future System effort which was going to be significantly different from 360/370, during that period 370 product efforts were being shutdown. when FS failed, there was then mad rush to get 370 software & hardware items back into the 370 product pipelines; however that long delay is credited with giving clone processors a foothold in the market. misc. past future system references http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys the mad rush also contributed to release some number of 370 items that i had continued to do all during the FS period (i would periodically ridicule FS activities in various ways ... which possibly wasn't exactly career enhancing). One of my pieces to ship was my resource manager ... and it was selected to be the guinea pig for starting to charge for kernel software. I got to spend a lot of time with lawyers and business people about politices for kernel software charging. At that time, it was just going to be kernel software that was *NOT* directly related to hardware support (aka device drivers, multiprocessor operation, etc) and that *FREE* kernel software couldn't require as pre-req, *PRICED* software. I had also been doing a lot of work on multiprocessor support during the period ... and what went out in the resource manager was a lot of kernel restructuring done for multiprocessor support (but not actual multiprocessing support). The next release (after release associated with my initial resource manager) was going to have multiprocessor support ... but was dependent on all the restructuring that had already shipped in my resource manager. The *FREE* multiprocessor (aka hardware) support could require my (*PRICED*) resource manager as pre-requisite. The eventual solution was moving something like 90% of the code from my resource manager into the *FREE* software base ... while leaving the price for my resource manager the same. There were a couple more of free *base* system releases with growing body of kernel software addons that were charged for. Then came the switch to all charged for kernel software. The last release of base *FREE* kernel software is typically what is used with Hercules 370 emulation. There then was a 1-2 years of charging for all kernel software before starting the transition to OCO (object code only) in the first part of the 80s. old "Data Areas Manuals to be dropped" ibm-main post from 2007 that discusses OCO and OCO-wars. Tymshare had provided its online computer conferencing to SHARE for free as VMSHARE starting in AUG76 ... and this post references some of the OCO online discussions from the period: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#15 Data Areas Manuals to be dropped and also here http://www.mail-archive.com/ibm-main@bama.ua.edu/msg48551.html more OCO discussion on ibm-main later in 2007 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#6 Open z/Architecture or Not http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#8 Open z/Architecture or Not and http://www.mail-archive.com/ibm-main@bama.ua.edu/msg62826.html http://www.mail-archive.com/ibm-main@bama.ua.edu/msg62831.html -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
