Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Public access multics

I'd start with: https://multicians.org/myths.html Clem, I think that's too limited in scope. Like a lot of 'big' 'failures' (defined in Multics' case as 'failure to grow to significant market share, and continue in the long term'), I don't think Multics 'failed' for a single reason. In general, in large failures, there are a number of causes, all doing their bit. Now, if there are M causes, ranked in priority, maybe the first N1 are _each_ big enough that _any one_ of them could have led to that outcome. Or maybe not; maybe it needed the first N2, all acting in concert. My crystal ball isn't that accurate. But here's my take on _some_ of Multics' main issues. - Management: if you look at: https://multicians.org/hill-mgt.html it's clear that Honeywell top management didn't understand Multics, and didn't understand that it had a long-term potential. They terminated investment in new hardware, and that was what finally killed Multics. - Non-portability: the system was too tied to a specific platform; it couldn't really be moved elsewhere. (E.g. the code is riddled with 'fixed bin 18'; yes, that could be changed with a program to edit the source, but there are lots of dependencies on the specifics of the machine's architecture.) It would be possible to re-write it to run on, say, a 386, but you'd pretty much have to start from scratch. - Built for the wrong future: a key assumption was that people would continue to get their computes from large centralized machines. Clearly, that was wrong (and it played into the issues with Honeywell management)>. Multics _could_ have made the transition to today's 'small' (physically) machines, in which case it would have been really good to have - e.g. if we could run browsers in AIM boxes a lot of malware simply would not be an issue. But the point above prevented that. Those are some of the big ones; I may come up with more. I've CC'd a couple of Multicians - perhaps they can add additional insight. Noel