What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS 2065

cp67 shipped source code maintenance. the 6-23-68 plus 1 unbundling accouncement started charging-licensing application software ... however kernel software was still free (under the theory it was required for the hardware). mainstream batch systems shipped executable maint. and source was available on fiche.

however cp67 morphed into vm-370 and continued to ship source code maint. monthly PLC (program level change) maint. tapes had both complete system executable build ... as well as all the source for for rebuilding system from scratch. the multi-level source code update infrastructure was part of this ... the stuff on the monthly PLC tapes were the base release source ... plus all the individual, incremental source code updates that had been created since the release.

many customers had extensive updates of their own ... and monthly PLC maint. frequently required merging the local customer source updates with the new product updates ... and-or retrofitting specifically selective product maint. updates to customer source built system.

some amount of features that I had implemented as an undergraduate for cp67 got dropped in the morph from cp67 to vm370 ... however there were numerous customers lobbying for them to be made available in the vm370 product. eventually i got to do the resource manager for vm370 ... posting of the old original product announcement letter

some number of other references to pieces of the resource manager

however they also selected the resource manager to be guinea pig for charging for kernel software

which met that I had to spend quite a bit of time with the business, legal, and pricing people on creating policy for kernel software pricing. that iteration of kernel software charging was that new kernel code not directly required for hardware support could be charged for (while direct hardware support software like device drivers were still free). this policty created kernel software features ... base (free) product with selected purchased add-ons. This lasted a couple of years ... and eventually they reintegrated and charge for a single kernel which they renamed VM-SP (i.e. system *product*).

there was something of a hiccup with the resource manager tho. In the initial resource manager i included a whole lot of kernel rewrite ... and when they decided to ship SMP support in the following release ... it was realized that a lot of stuff that SMP support required I had already shipped in the resource manager. This created a policy problem since it would be a violation to have as a prerequisite for the *free* SMP support, the priced resource manager.

the problem was that I had done the overall SMP design .. predicated on a bunch of kernel structural changes that I had included with the resource manager. the eventual resolution was to move possibly 80 percent of the resource manager code into the free kernel. misc. past smp posts

note ... even tho the resource manager was charged for ... it still shipped as source code maintenance ... and in fact was a set of source code updates to the base, free kernel code. source code maint. continued even after move to pricing for all kernel code with vm-sp. however OCO (object code only) was being strongly pushed ... putting it even footing with the other operating systems. OCO was heavily debated issue at customer user group meetings and on vmshare ... especially hot item during the mid-80s.

vmshare archives

--