[BC] RCA Busted Up??

[PeterH5322]

>I think you're thinking of Amdahl.

Although I was not a founding member of Amdahl, I was there from the 
mid-1970s to nearly 20 years later.

I joined the company just after the 25th machine was shipped.


>They made IBM compatible 
>mainframes for a fraction of the price and better performance.

A VERY LARGE fraction.

It cost us $750,000 to manufacture, and we sold them for $2,000,000 to 
$3,000,000 ... just about 12.5 percent less than IBM charged for their 
equivalent machines.

With IBM's infamous "on line system test allowance", whereby you could 
operate an IBM mainframe in purportedly a "test mode" for possibly up to 
a year, FOR FREE, IBM was able to undercut us, for those customers it 
desired to ... er ... bribe.

Rockwell and a host of others received this special, anti-competitive 
treatment.


>I believe IBM tried to restrict their use of software.

Never.

Always available to everyone, on the same license terms, whether IBM, 
Amdahl, Hitachi, or whomever.


>The Feds required IBM to make the source code available to all comers.

Only for those products for which no copyright was claimed, which 
included system and application software up to about 1977.

NEVER ... repeat, NEVER ... for so-called "program products", which were 
always licensed, and for which source code could be obtained by 
licensees, but never otherwise.

IMS and CICS are but two examples.

ABC's movie library management software is an example of a user-developed 
program system which ran under IBM's CICS.