[email protected] (Clark Morris) writes: > If the goal was to eliminate the need for highly technical people who > understand the platform and the tradeoffs, that is a futile goal for > any operating system. If the goal is to eliminate the need for > assembler coded exits, this is more doable but customization will > always be with us. While there can be plenty of obscurity in > assembler, how well documented are the SYS1.PARMLIB members and JES > initialization decks that control how the systems operate? These are > just weird programming interfaces that can be every bit as cryptic. > > As someone who did his last systems programming in the 1990s, I would > hope that systems maintenance and upgrade has become a lot easier (and > if IBM made the Knowledge Center and Shopz 24/365.24 available) and > that less custom code is required because of all the new concerns that > I didn't have to deal with. The environment has become more complex > for all of the operating systems so anything that can be eliminated is > to the good. There is enough to do so that automation of some of the > grunt work is a good thing.
23Jun1969 unbundling announcement started to charge for (application) software, SE services, etc ... however IBM managed to make the case that kernel software should still be free http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle in the 1st part of 70s, they launch the (failed) Future System effort, completely different from 360/370 and was going to complete 360/370 ... supposedly major motivation was to significantly increase the complexity of processor/controller interface as countermeasure to clone controllers. http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys however, the lack of IBM 370 offerings during the FS period is credited with giving clone processors a market foothold. the rise of clone processors then initiates the transition to charging for kernel software ... and my resource manager is selected as guinea pig ... I get to spend a lot of time with lawyers and business people on charging for kernel software http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare eventually transition to charging for all kernel software happens in the early 80s .... starting the OCO-wars ... transition to "object code only" ... some of this shows up in the VMSHARE archives http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/ part of the motivation was source code availability contributed to customers making source code motifications ... which contributes to customers needing their own system programmers and also slows down keeping up with the latest system releases (cutting into budget that could be spent with IBM). this period in the first part of the 80s also saw many customers buying 4300s (in some cases ordering hundreds at a time) for placing out in departmental areas (sort of leading wave of distributed computing tsunami). Initially MVS was locked out of this market. The mid-range disks were all FBA that could be deployed out in non-datacenter environments. Eventually 3375 CKD emulation on 3370 FBA came out ... but that didn't significantly help. Turns out these large deparmental deployments were looking at large tens of systems per staff member ... while MVS systems were frequently measured in tens of staff members per MVS system (if MVS was going to play in that market, it had to significantly lower skill requirements) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd trivia: some old 4300 email from the period http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx other trivia: TYMSHARE started offering is CMS-based online computer conferencing free to SHARE as VmSHARE in AUG1976. -- 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
