30 Jan
2009
30 Jan
'09
6:55 a.m.
Tim McNerney wrote:
No matter how many times I hear stories like this, or
lived through
stories like this, I still shake my head and can't understand how the
source code gets lost. All these corporations, all the lawsuits,
all the programmers, all the marketing money, and so often no one,
NO ONE,
preserves arguably the most important bits.
One classic case of lost source code was for TSX-PLUS. Assuming that
the information from S&H was correct, then at some point after the last
(V6.5 in 1991) version was frozen, the system which held the source
code failed. For reasons which were never explained, an off-system
tape or other media backup was not available to recover the files.
It was established that hard copy of the source files existed, but it may
have been from an earlier (V6.4) version. Whatever the actual story,
evidently the source files were never securely archived even while
the product was still actively being sold and shortly after it had been
released.
Many PDP-11 software releases also suffered the same fate, especially
the old versions prior to 1980. While I have almost no knowledge of
RSTS/E and RSX-11, at least for RT-11, as far as I am aware, all of
the binary distributions since V04.00 from 1980 have been correctly
(or at least sufficiently) archived. A few of the earlier (V3.x) binary
distributions are also archived but with less than 100% of the files
having been saved. Even some of the layered products have survived
along with the source files for some of the binary distributions of RT-11.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine