Re:Cisco says 90% of internet traffic goes through Erlang-co...
by skissane on Monday June 04, 2018 @03:57AM
(#17225503)
The folks calling for IBM to release a PL/S compiler were not demanding IBM hand it out for free. They would have been satisfied by IBM offering it for sale on usual commercial terms, for a similar price to IBM's other compilers (PL/I, COBOL, FORTRAN, etc).
But IBM wasn't willing to sell its customers a PL/S compiler.
One reason was that (up until the OCO announcement in 1983) IBM gave its customers the PL/S source code, but not giving them a PL/S compiler discouraged customers from changing the source code, since they couldn't recompile it. Customer modifications had to be made in assembler, which was a lot harder to maintain.
Another reason was to make life harder for competing vendors selling IBM-compatible mainframes, such as Amdahl, Fujitsu and Hitachi.
But IBM wasn't willing to sell its customers a PL/S compiler.
One reason was that (up until the OCO announcement in 1983) IBM gave its customers the PL/S source code, but not giving them a PL/S compiler discouraged customers from changing the source code, since they couldn't recompile it. Customer modifications had to be made in assembler, which was a lot harder to maintain.
Another reason was to make life harder for competing vendors selling IBM-compatible mainframes, such as Amdahl, Fujitsu and Hitachi.