programming languages and compilers (was Re: Dennis Ritchie has died)

From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> I wasn't involved in the years we're talking about, 1964-1969 but from what I have read and heard, what I said earlier was correct. None of the IBM compilers (and I'll add OS to the list) were ever open source. Now to clarify, the "unbundling" in 1969 was to be able to charge separate line items for software. I don't think anybody is silly enough to say when you paid a million bucks for a machine and they "threw in" the OS and compilers you actually got that for free, it was just a package deal "at no additional charge." That is not the same as free. I don't believe you had a snowball's chance in hell of getting the code from IBM if you didn't shell out for their hardware and sign licensing agreements. Heck, we had microcode listings on trolleys for the SEs in most of the shops I worked for in the early days, but nobody considered that stuff in the machine room open source either. It was just what you got to be able to have your system maintained. The operating systems Eric mentioned are in the public domain, but as far as what I have been told, it is not because IBM didn't assert copyright or intentionally placed them in the public domain, but because of U.S. copyright law prior to 1980. In fact MVS 3.8 is in the public domain and it was released around 1974, much after the 1969 unbundling. I think there is proof to this view because there are Y manuals (which would later be changed to LY for "licensed materials") that are "restricted distribution" even in the late 1960s. That shows IBM did make efforts to keep material (specifically program logic manuals) out of public distribution and only sent them to licensed customers. I don't think any wrangling was required to get source until much later. For years including MVS 3.8 you got almost all the source just to be able to do a sysgen. I was never a sysprog and never did a sysgen until a few years ago, so I have no idea why they shipped it that way. But they did, and everybody who bought a system got the OS to be able to do sysgens and bring up their own system. That doesn't mean the OS and tools were open source, I'm near certain if you didn't buy a system and sign a license agreement you had no legal way to get the OS or compilers. If not, it makes no sense to restrict manuals and make a series of manuals only for licensed customers when the source code is freely available. I have never heard that the source was available without a license which in turn requires a hardware purchase, I don't consider that open source. I worked for IBM business partners for many years and we had access to source long after they went OCO so I don't know what regular customer sites had access to. If there are any old sysprogs on the list maybe they will remember when IBM went OCO. Up until the VM version of IBMLink was taken offline a couple of years ago we could still see some source code. It dwindled every year but there was still some stuff available. 100% correct That's true of CICS and IMS as well, both made billions of dollars over the years for IBM. Those were called FDP (Field Developed Products) they were written by customers, and picked up (somehow) by IBM. So good in fact that Fujitsu settled out of court by paying IBM 830 million dollars for ripping off MVS and VSE in the 1990s.