On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, [iso-8859-1] Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra wrote:
> Em Fri, 04 Jul 2003 18:37:50 +0800, debia escreveu: > > > On Wed, 2 Jul 2003, [iso-8859-1] Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra > > wrote: > > > >> But the only excuse for not fixing it is lack of focus. PS/2 was not > >> important enough for IBM. > > > > Back then there were not _that_ many PCs around, and IBM also sold > > several ranges of minicomputer and its S/370 mainframes. > > Yes, that's why open systems are *good*. If the PC was truly open, or > if > IBM had learnt open systems properly, the PS/2 fiasco wouldn't have left > the window (oops!) open for a monopolist to take over IBM's place without > learning the lessons the Justice Department had already taught IBM. In > other words, IBM's failure could have been filled by other companies. > The way it was, we only got clone-makers like Compaq, who killed the Alpha > and the PA-RISC at MS's bidding... That is bollocks, pure and simple. The S/360 was open enough that others could clone it, and they did. Mostly, though, you still got to run IBM operating systems on them. The S/370 was open enough that others could clone it, and they did. In some cases, vendors (such as Fujitsu and Hitachi) provided their own operating systems. However, they were derived illegally from IBM's OS/VS family - there were court cases and settlements to prove it. They _could_ have written their own operating systems, and may have done so for the Japanese market. The PC familiy was open enough that others could clone it, and they did. My main PC is a direct no-name derivative of the PC/AT of so many years ago. IBM even published the source code for the original PC BIOS I have a freely-available (at the time) book published by IBM and which contains the listing of the BIOS for the PC/XT. There was nothing to prevent others from writing their own operating systems, and the did. There were Unix implementations from Coherent and others, there was CP/M-86 and Concurrent CP/M-86 (I used both), Novell wrote their Netware for it. The impendiment to writing your own OS for the S/360 was not the available information - back then the OS was free, and I think came with source. It was the cost of ownership of the hardware. I can now download and run MVS 3,8, IBM's premier mainframe operating system from the mid 70s and run it on my PC under hercules. You can install the current Hercules yourself, it's a standard Debian package, but best you get it from SID. The impendiment to writing your own OS for the PC was not the available information, but rather the availability of tools and the number of people using the PC. As those problems were resolved, people wrote the tools and OS operating systems, mostly in the Unix mould, have proliferated. As for Compaq killing Alpha and PA-RISC, that was driven by its perception of how best to make a dollar. NT 4 was available for IA32, Alpha, PPC and HP-RISC. When MS withdrew support for Alpha, that pretty much killed the Alpha as far as I can see. -- Cheers John Summerfield Please, no off-list mail at all at all. This address accepts mail only from Debian addresses.
