On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:41:33 -0500, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <[email protected]> wrote:
>The following message is a courtesy copy of an article >that has been posted to bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers as well. > > >[email protected] (Arthur T.) writes: >> It's been a long time since IBM went OCO. When they did, didn't they >> promise better documentation to make up for the inability to see what >> the programs are actually doing? > >part of transition to OCO ... was no longer distributing source and >source maintenance (at least in the virtual machine cp67 and vm370 >worlds) ... and so it pretty much put an end to user modified code >... to compensate, there was suppose to be lots of user exits. Broken promise. Well, sort of, you must make a business case for the exit. Now, to my primitive brain, that translates to "you tell us how our taking the time, effort, and money to put in this exit will increase OUR revenue." > >there were a number of commercial timesharing service bureaus that were >formed in late 60s and early 70s using virtual machine cp67 and/or >vm370. one of these was Tymshare ... which had also created a CMS-based >computer conferencing platform. A version of this was made available to >SHARE as VMSHARE in Aug76 ... vmshare archive: >http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/ > >a couple of OCO forums from vmshare: >http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=OCO&ft=PROB >http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=OCOBUS&ft=MEMO >http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=OCO:BDAY&ft=MEMO > >an entry from one above: > >Today is OCO's tenth birthday > >Ten years ago today, IBM announced its Object Code Only policy. > >The VM community understood at once what a grave error IBM was making >in adopting that policy. Indeed, members of the community had already >put a good deal of effort into dissuading IBM from making that dramatic >change in its relationship with its customers, to no avail. > Just say NO to OCO! Why do you think that a lot of the geeks are now loving Linux? Not only full source, but guaranteed by the license to never be taken OCO. There is even a strong push to remove all the "binary blobs" from the kernel and tell the vendors that if they want their <elided> hardware supported in the kernel, then release source drivers or at least complete hardware documentation. -- John, FOSS bigot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
