What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS 2066
6-23-68 plus 1 was the unbundling announcement ... and start of charging for application software.
kernel-system software was still "free" under the theory that it was required for the operation of the hardware.
my resource manager was selected to be the guinea pig for charging for kernel software. i got to spend some amount of time over extended period with the business and pricing people. the initial take was that kernel software, not directly connected to hardware support could be priced ... the resource manager improved system performance but wasn't actually required for hardware operations (things like device drivers, etc). misc. posts on paging, fair share scheduling, resource manager, etc
some related posts on benchmarking and preparing the resource manager for release
when they decided to ship multiprocessing kernel support in the release following ... there was a problem. I had included a bunch of stuff in the resource manager that was required for multiprocessing support. the licensing rules prevented charging for multiprocessing support (since it was required to make multiprocessing hardware work) ... so therefor it was also against the rules to have a priced prereq. for enabling multiprocessor support.
the eventual resolution was to move all the multiprocessor required pieces out of the resource manager into the base (free) system.
I remember taking a DCL clbutt back in the late 80s, early 90s. Did DEC teach Unix, too? The only DEC system I ever saw that didn't run a DEC OS was...
Andrew Swallow VAXes were used to control all kinds of stuff, and they certainly did talk to different makes of printer. were plenty of 3rd party QBus...
misc. past postings about multiprocessing support
misc. past posts about unbundling
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What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS 2067
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