[geeks] [rescue] Ultra 5 OS

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 07:35:13PM -0400, Lionel Peterson wrote:

>Actually, the OS and early compilers were bundled w/hardware, not 
>'free' as I recall, and with the rise of plug-compatible mainframes 
>they were forced 'productize' it to keep it out of the hands of 
>competitors.

No. IBM called them bundled, but anyone could get a copy of them for free.
When the plug compatible mainframes started to appear they were available
for $100 distribution fee, which included service and support via update
tapes and telephone calls.

If you want an systems engineer to show up at your location you had to have
a service contract, which was bundled in with the hardware.

Some systems, for example VM/370 were and to this day are still free. The
first pay versions were extensions (VM System Product) some taken from the
public domain mods tapes and made official, some combinations of other
products packaged together at a lower price, e.g. Xedit.

Eventually VM/370 became unable to run on real hardware, and VM/XA is a pay
product. However, you can still download the last version of VM/370 that
was free and run it on your computer. You can even run it on your
virtual computer running on non IBM or even 370 hardware.


>
>I think as far as free applications go, I suspect you are describing 
>SHARE, which was the prototype for DECUS, quasi-corporate sponsored 
>users group with a large software library of contributions from 
>members...


I am describing an IBM division that was started in the 1950's, which
had a catalog of free programs, and would upon request, provide them on
tape or card decks. I always made my requests via an IBM SE, so they were
free (as in no charge at all), but there may have been a distribution 
charge if you called or wrote for them.

 From what I remember, it mutated into the PID (Program Information Division)
which provided fixes to customers. Every fix tape that came out of PID came
with a letter hand signed by its manager Marty Kloomok. 

His signature was never the same and the running joke was he really did
not exist and people took turns signing the letters, but he was real and
he did sign them. His replacement, Art Wahl, decided that it was better
to have them unsigned than signed by "a wall", and stopped.


SHARE did have not have their own library, several members kept them,
and there were competing tapes. The "official" tape was maintained by the
Connecticut Bank and Trust company, and it was called the CBT tape, never
the SHARE tape.


>Finally, I used to work for UniPress, and they got their start 
>selling a supported version of EMACS, as I recall, the may have 
>pre-dated Cygnus (or been started at aprox the same time)...
>
>Lionel
>_______________________________________________
>GEEKS:  http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/geeks


The first company to do this that I know of was Duquesne Software who took
a mod from the CBT tape and sold it, with support. This was around 1987,
and AFAIK they were not related to the mod's authors.

Some people were quite offended by the concept and called them "duck-sneeze".

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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