28 Jul
2023
28 Jul
'23
10:18 p.m.
On 7/27/23, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote:
My guess was that binary compatibility
wasn't a big issue in those days, since nearly all applications
software was written only for specific installations. And of course
licensing issues would preclude running IBM OS on the other machines.
That certainly was true for S/360 in the 1960s. IBM bundled its
software offerings with its hardware. If you leased an IBM S/360, you
got the development toolset (compilers, link editor, assembler) for
free, as well as utilities such as sort/merge. Source code for the OS
and the utilities was readily available in microfiche form. There
were very few thrid-party software offerings. One that sticks in my
mind is SyncSort, a sort/merge utility that far outperformed IBM's
sort/merge program. If you were a big S/360 data center doing really
serious, high-volume stuff, you used Storage Technology tape drives
and SyncSort.
That all changed when a 1969 antitrust complaint caused IBM to
unbundle its software from hardware. Before, you got the software for
free as part of your hardware lease. After, you had to buy a separate
license for each software product.
-Paul W.