> -----Original Message-----
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of William H. Blair
>
> J R notes:
>
> > Maybe I'm misremembering but I'm sure I was using SPF, not ISPF,
> > in or around 1974 -- and that *was* developed within IBM.
>
> Yes. SPF was developed by IBM and used internally for a couple of
> years before it was released as a program product in 1976. Tom
> Simpson and Dr. Mark Mergen related the fierce battle within IBM
> regarding releasing SPF as a PP. Many thought that it was too
> valuable to IBM('s programmer) productivity and should be kept as
> an internal tool. Others pointed out the competition from XEDIT;
> they used the "full screen editors are great" angle to convince
> them that customers would migrate from TSO to CMS as a result,
> so releasing SPF would keep customers on MVS/TSO (although, at
> the time, 90% of the customers were still running SVS) and keep
> them away from alternative full-screen editors from ISVs.
ISTR that "PDF" (now ISPF option 2) was the full-screen editor; an
add-on to "SPF".
> In the
> end, internal studies indicated that TSO CPU time would go up,
> which would lead to customers buying more faster processors, so
> SPF was packaged as a PP and released in 1976 (first publicly
> demoed at GUIDE) simply to sell more hardware. Raleigh (Cary,
> actually) was furious. The developers were my neighbors where
> I lived at the time. They soon changed their minds as sales of
> SPF went way past projections and IBM knew they had a hit on
> their hands.
-jc-
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