[COFF] What Happened to Interdata?

[Paul Winalski]

On 7/27/23, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>
> My guess was that binary compatibility
> wasn't a big issue in those days, since nearly all applications
> software was written only for specific installations.  And of course
> licensing issues would preclude running IBM OS on the other machines.

That certainly was true for S/360 in the 1960s.  IBM bundled its
software offerings with its hardware.  If you leased an IBM S/360, you
got the development toolset (compilers, link editor, assembler) for
free, as well as utilities such as sort/merge.  Source code for the OS
and the utilities was readily available in microfiche form.  There
were very few thrid-party software offerings.  One that sticks in my
mind is SyncSort, a sort/merge utility that far outperformed IBM's
sort/merge program.  If you were a big S/360 data center doing really
serious, high-volume stuff, you used Storage Technology tape drives
and SyncSort.

That all changed when a 1969 antitrust complaint caused IBM to
unbundle its software from hardware.  Before, you got the software for
free as part of your hardware lease.  After, you had to buy a separate
license for each software product.

-Paul W.