On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 15:34 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), John Dallman wrote:

> In about 2019, I noticed that a widely used DBMS was still built with a
> mixture of VS.2010 and VS.2013. The DoD certainly used it, so they were
> going to object to the VS.2010 parts very soon.

Hard to see any proprietary software withstanding that kind of scrutiny
for long. Pretty soon, the only stuff left standing will be Open Source.

On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 00:09 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), John Dallman wrote:

> In the field I work in, there are open source products,
> but they aren't very good: the commercial products are all way ahead of
> them.

“Open source” does not preclude “commercial”.

On 2024-03-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 15:34 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), John Dallman wrote:
>
>> In about 2019, I noticed that a widely used DBMS was still built with a
>> mixture of VS.2010 and VS.2013. The DoD certainly used it, so they were
>> going to object to the VS.2010 parts very soon.
>
> Hard to see any proprietary software withstanding that kind of scrutiny
> for long. Pretty soon, the only stuff left standing will be Open Source.

....whatever MICROS~1 defines that to be...

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | The Internet is like a big city:
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | it has plenty of bright lights and
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | excitement, but also dark alleys
/ \ if you read it the right way. | down which the unwary get mugged.

On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 02:17:58 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-03-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Pretty soon, the only stuff left standing will be Open Source.
>
> ...whatever MICROS~1 defines that to be...

They don’t get to control it. In fact, they’re busy playing catch-up,
trying to turn Windows into Linux with WSL.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
> That doesn’t sound so bad, until you discover that the overall
> “control program” (the “CP” part) would also blindly execute this same
> privileged code as well. And so a single nonprivileged user could
> subvert the entire system.

some of the MIT CTSS/7094
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System
https://multicians.org/thvv/7094.html
people went to the 5th flr for Multics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics

others went to the IBM scientific center on the 4th flr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Scientific_Center
and did virtual machines, internal network, numerous interactive apps,
monitoring&performance work, invented GML in 1969 (decade later morphs
into ISO standard SGML, and after another decade morphs into HTML at
CERN).

Initially, CP40/CMS was done on a 360/40 with virtual memory hardware
mods ... then morphs into CP67/CMS when 360/67 standard with virtual
memory becomes available. It would simulate a virtual machine's
priviledge instructions ... but isolated within that virtual machine's
domain ... not the real machine's domain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/CMS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_CP/CMS
More history/details at Melinda's website
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

Naturally, there was some amount of friendly competitiion between the
two efforts on the 4th & 5th flrs. CTSS "RUNOFF" had been redone for CMS
as "SCRIPT" ... and after GML was invented in 1969, GML tag processing
added to SCRIPT. There was CP67/CMS MIT Urban lab in the bldg across the
quad. The CP67 ASCII support had been for TTY devices with
lines(/transmission) shorter then 255 chars (1byte length
field). Somebody down at Harvard got a new ASCII device (plotter?) and
they needed to patch CP67 to handle up to 1200(?) chars ...a flaw in the
patch crashed the system 27times in one day
https://www.multicians.org/thvv/360-67.html
"Multics was also crashing quite often at that time, but each crash took
an hour to recover because we salvaged the entire file system. This
unfavorable comparison was one reason that the Multics team began
development of the New Storage System.)"

In 60s, there was two commercial online service bureaus spinoffs of the
science center ... specializing in services for the financial industry
and had to demonstrate strong security because competing financial
companies were making use of the services.

there were also various gov. agencies installing CP67/CMS because of its
strong security.

Another commercial online service bureau was TYMSHARE in the 70s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare
and in Aug1976 they provided their online computer conferencing
system (precursor to modern social media), "free" to the IBM
user group SHARE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_(computing)
as VMSHARE, archives here
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare

a 3-letter gov. agency was large customer (and required gov. level
security) and very active in the VM group at SHARE and on vmshare.

The science center had also ported APL\360 to CP67/CMS as CMS\APL,
opening workspaces from "swapped 16kbyes" to demand page large virtual
memory ... and also implemented an API for system services like file I/O
.... enabling many real world applications. Then the business planners
in Armonk corporate hdqtrs loaded the most valuable corporate data on
the Cambridge system for doing CMS\APL-based business applications.
Strong security had to also be demonstrated since professors, staff, and
students from Boston area educational institutions were also using the
Cambridge CP67/CMS system.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

In article <uuaafd$1a584$1@dont-email.me>, ldo@nz.invalid (Lawrence
D'Oliveiro) wrote:

> _Open source_ does not preclude _commercial_.

In theory, no. However, Sun's attempt to make much of their commercial
closed-source software open source and its contribution to their collapse
tends to strengthen the divide.

John

On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 11:57 +0100 (BST)
jgd@cix.co.uk (John Dallman) wrote:

> In article <uuaafd$1a584$1@dont-email.me>, ldo@nz.invalid (Lawrence
> D'Oliveiro) wrote:
>
> > _Open source_ does not preclude _commercial_.
>
> In theory, no. However, Sun's attempt to make much of their commercial
> closed-source software open source and its contribution to their collapse
> tends to strengthen the divide.

Then there's RHEL et al, also commercial products with open source
cores like MacOS and OneFS.

As for Sun, I think their demise had more to do with the PC
catching up with the Sparc than anything else. We can be thankful that they
made ZFS open source otherwise that splendid filesystem would be lost or
buried in expensive Oracle products.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
For forms of government let fools contest
Whate're is best administered is best - Alexander Pope

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 00:09 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), John Dallman wrote:
>
>> In the field I work in, there are open source products,
>> but they aren't very good: the commercial products are all way ahead of
>> them.
>
>“Open source” does not preclude “commercial”.

That's not what you claimed. You said (and I'll quote since you snipped it
in your reply):

>> Pretty soon, the only stuff left standing will be Open Source.

John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> writes:
> Yes, I used it back in the day to develop and run some economic
> simulations. CP actually was a multi-user OS, by the way, with the
> communication between users via shared disks and what we called
> virtual card chutes, connecting the simulated punch on one virtual
> machine to the reader on another.

and RSCS/VNET also forwarded the (virtual unit record) spool files to
users on different machines ... was used for several different "email"
implementations.

GML website seems to have gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20230402212558/http://www.sgmlsource.com/history/jasis.htm
"Actually, the law office application was the original motivation for
the project, something I was allowed to do part-time because of my
knowledge of the user requirements. My real job was to encourage the
staffs of the various scientific centers to make use of the CP-67-based
Wide Area Network that was centered in Cambridge."

CSC member responsible for CP67 wide-area network (morphs into the
corporate internal network larger than arpanet/internet from just about
beginning until sometime mid/late 80s ... technology also used for the
corporate sponsored univ bitnet/earn, also for a time larger than
internet)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edson_Hendricks

"In June 1975, MIT Professor Jerry Saltzer accompanied Hendricks to
DARPA, where Hendricks described his innovations to the principal
scientist, Dr. Vinton Cerf. Later that year in September 15-19 of 75,
Cerf and Hendricks were the only two delegates from the United States,
to attend a workshop on Data Communications at the International
Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, 2361 Laxenburg Austria where
again, Hendricks spoke publicly about his innovative design which paved
the way to the Internet as we know it today."

SJMerc article about Edson (passed aug2020) and "IBM'S MISSED
OPPORTUNITY WITH THE INTERNET" (gone behind paywall but lives free at
wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20000124004147/http://www1.sjmercury.com/svtech/columns/gillmor/docs/dg092499.htm
Also from wayback machine, some additional (IBM missed INTERENET)
references from Ed's website
https://web.archive.org/web/20000115185349/http://www.edh.net/bungle.htm

corporate sponsored univ bitnet/earn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET

Note, Pisa Science Center had done "SPM" for CP/67 (inter virtual
machine communication) ... which never ships to customers ... although
the VM/370 RSCS/VNET that shipped to customers included support for
using "SPM". "SPM" was superset combination of the later VM/370 "VMCF",
"IUCV", and "SMSG" (functions).

triva: internally within IBM a VM370/CMS, 3270 client/server "space war"
game was implemented using "SPM" ... and since RCSC/VNET supported
"SPM", clients could be almost anywhere on the internal network. aside:
almost immediately robotic clients appeared, beating all humans (with
their faster response time) ... server then was modified to increase
energy use non-linearly as command intervals dropped below nominal human
response ... somewhat leveling the playing field.

other triva: 1st webserver in the US was on Stanford SLAC VM370 system
https://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml
https://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/firstpages.shtml

SLAC also sponsored the monthly VM370 user group meetings ("BAYBUNCH")

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

there was early case where a MIT student "hung" the IBM cambridge system
by writing a channel program that looped, locking up the i/o channel.
system had to be re-ipled and the student contacted to not do that
again, he did it again and his user login was disabled. he then
complained that IBM wasn't allowed to block his user (apparently didn't
realize that it wasn't a MIT system).

the commercial online CP67 services dealt with it early on by adding a
new security class that wouldn't simulate the SIO instruction that
invoked channel programs ... restricting CMS I/O to just "diagnose"
instruction (which already started being used for CMS I/O) ... some
vmshare discussion about sandbox'ing users.

mid-90s there was small conference of cal. univ computer science
graduate school professors ... who complained that graduate students
were getting more "peer points" by demonstrating how to crash systems as
opposed to building systems that were crash proof.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 16:12:39 GMT, Scott Lurndal wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>>On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 00:09 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), John Dallman wrote:
>>
>>> In the field I work in, there are open source products,
>>> but they aren't very good: the commercial products are all way ahead
>>> of them.
>>
>>> Pretty soon, the only stuff left standing will be Open Source.
>>
>>“Open source” does not preclude “commercial”.
>
> That's not what you claimed.

I claimed both. One claim does not conflict with the other. In fact, they
reinforce each other.