[email protected] (Shane Ginnane) writes: > A company that has to be dragged kicking and screaming into > acknowledging potential security exposures in its OCO code release(s). > Hmmm - wonder where I've heard that before.
as undergraduate in 60s I did lots of cp67 enhancements and sometimes IBM would suggest some things for me to do ... in retrospect some of the things possibly originated from this community (ref gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine) http://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml cp67 versions and maintenance shipped in both binary and source form and lots of installations would (re-)build production system from source. This tradition carried forward in transition from cp67 to vm370. it was quite a culture shock the transition to OCO in the 80s ... as can be seen in some of the OCO-war comments in the VMSHARE archives (online computer conferencing that TYMSHARE provided to SHARE starting in Aug1976 ... coming up on 40yrs) http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare folklore from this period was certain gov. agencies requested all the "exact source" that corresponded for a full production running system (for the POK favorite son operating system). After spending $5M investigating the issue, the response was it wouldn't be practical. The transition somewhat started with the 23Jun1969 unbundling announcement that started to separately charge for software, maint., etc ... motivating by various legal actions ... some past posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundling however, they were able to make the case that operating system software should still be free. however during the future system period in the first half of the 70s, internal politics was killing off 370 product efforts (and the lack of 370 offerings during this period is credited with giving clone processors a market foothold) ... some past posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys with the demise of FS there was mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipelines. I had continued to do 360/370 stuff all during the FS period (including periodically ridiculing FS efforts which wasn't exactly a career enhancing activity). However the mad rush to get stuff in 370 product pipelines contributed to decision to release a lot of software stuff I had been doing. Some of it was merged into standard releases ... but it was decided to package up some of the other stuff and offer it as separate, priced operating system add-on. This got to be the guinea pig for the change in decision to start charging for operating system software (presumably motivated by the rise of the clone processors), and I got to spend a lot of time with lawyers and business people regarding operating system software charging. Eventually the transition completed and all operating system software was being charged for (the 370 emulators now include packages of last freely available operating system software). Then the referenced OCO-wars begin after the transition was complete. other trivia: i was blamed for online computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s & early 80s ... some past posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc folklore is that when executive committee was told about online computer conferencing (and the internal network), 5of6 wanted to fire me. There was then some corporate studies of the issue and development of tools to automate many of the things I had been doing (and given official sanctions). The internal tools could be configured similar to the later "listserv" mailing list mode ... or more like usenet server mode (with servers exchanging and distributing items). some past posts mentioning internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime late '85 or early '86) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet the corporation also sponsored the univ. "bitnet" (in the us) ... (using technology similar to that used for the internal network) some past posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet and "EARN" in europe ... old email for person responsible for getting EARN started. http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#email840320 computer conferencing software similar to the internal tools were developed for bitnet/earn ... used for original ibm-main http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISTSERV and http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv-history.asp -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
