JOSH@ibm.com (Joshua Knight) (08/02/88)
In a contribution dated 30 Jul 88 06:47:58 GMT, chris@mimsy.uucp (Chris Torek) writes: > ... The reasons you cannot get VMS or MVS sources are also > more historical than anything else. [Incidentally, you *can* get > sources from IBM in some cases, but what you get may not be what you > expected.] ... I don't even speak for IBM, so I *certainly* don't have anything to say about VMS sources. :-) IBM did distribute "source" for most if not all of its mainframe software products at least before 1983. I was at a SHARE (large IBM systems users group) meeting in 1983 when IBM said that it would be moving towards binary distributions of major software systems. IBM calls this "OCO" which is an abbreviation for Object Code Only. IBM also announced a major OCO product for VM/CMS, SQL/DS, at about the same time. I was glad I was in the audience and not up on the podium fielding questions. The audience, largely systems support people, seemed rather hostile. There were buttons being circulated with "When Source is Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Source", etc. IBM's position on this is best articulated by someone whose job it is to talk about IBM policy and that's certainly not me. In any event, until relatively recently (in the history of software for IBM 360/370's) customers could get at least microfiche of most MVS "source". Thus I'm not sure that the reasons IBM is going more towards not releasing "source" are, as Chris suggests, "historical". Probably it's a minor point, the IBM MVS and VM/CMS "ambience" is clearly very different from that of Unix, binary distribution or not. I put "source" in quotes for reasons which are not of great interest to Unix-Wizards. I'm not very knowledgeable about IBM's policies or past practices in this area, so further comments from me on the topic are as likely to be misleading as informative. Any opinions expressed or implied are mine and not my employer's. Your mileage may vary, etc. Josh Knight IBM T.J. Watson Research Center josh@ibm.com, josh@yktvmh.BITNET