On 2017-06-27, at 10:01, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote:
> Contrast with mainframe software. Windows's descent into an open-range
> free-for-all began when it morphed from its single-user origin into a
> multiuser host platform. As with UNIX and other hands-off-my-gear operating
> systems, there was in the beginning no concept of managing multiple
> concurrent users even in a single physical box, let alone an environment
> complete with a swinging door into the wide wide world of skulking bogeymen.
>
> MVS was designed from the ground up to handle multiple disparate and even
> antagonistic users who were compelled by mainframe economics to share
> resources with each other. Security and separation of authority were
> foundational building blocks of the architecture, not latter day paste-ons
> needed to turn a totally personal OS into a business class server. For MVS,
> the internet was just another way to access the system. Controls woven into
> the basic framework of the OS were enhanced--not invented--to handle the
> increased complexity.
>
> So Windows is useful to us as a tool for getting our work done. UNIX is what
> it is--or whatever bean-counter management fantasizes it to be. Neither is a
> mainframe class OS.
>
I see the history differently. This is conjectural, but I believe
that UNIX had at least the user/group/others file protection facility
at a time when OS/360 had only the primitive data set passwords. I
recall, perhaps at MVS 3.8, systems programmers still relying on
passwords to control access to the master catalog or the resident
volume. (Where I was, the res pack password was the system ID spelled
backwards.) MVS bypassed the concept of resource ownership and went
directly to the ACL-like RACF.
-- gil
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
-- Benjamin Franklin
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