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> they didn't want to make that technology available to the masses Do you have a source for this? It makes far more sense that it simply was not feasible to ma
by twtw 8y ago
> they didn't want to make that technology available to the masses
Do you have a source for this? It makes far more sense that it simply was not feasible to make a System/360 available to the masses than it was intentionally kept back. I would assume IBM would have been thrilled to sell one to everyone on earth, but it was expensive and physically large.
> if the tech exists but it's not reachable by common folks, in my eyes it's as bad if not worse than it not existing at all
I disagree strongly. If developing technology that isn't available to the public is worse than not developing technology at all, there goes research. No new technology makes it to the public in its original form.
- oblio 8y agoI should have rephrased that: if its creators prefer to keep it under lock and key for decades (or forever). Regarding the tech: ok for 360 in the 60's, 70's, 80's even. But they couldn't do it even after 30 years? We had to wait for VMWare and Docker...
- twtw 8y agoYou keep attributing some kind of unfounded malice to IBM. VMWare released their first hypervisor for x86 in 1999. That's 30 years after the first IBM virtual machines. If you are asking: "why didn't IBM release a hypervisor for x86?" I would respond "why would you expect them to make a virtual machine on a platform that isn't theirs?" This 30 years is also the same timeline for Intel to make their microprocessors OoO and superscalar. That didn't have anything to do with IBM keeping their technology locked up.
- mcguire 8y agoLargely unrelated anecdote: About 1992-3, I worked at IBM Austin on the IBM Microkernel and Workplace OS[1]. The development machines we were using were "Sandalfeet"[2][3] which ran AIX and (IIRC) a weird 64-bit port of Windows NT (and the in-development Workplace OS). I once expressed the opinion that these were pretty neat little machines, and a co-worker (a real IBMer who had been there for a while, not a contractor like me) told me that they had warehouse full of them somewhere since they were never going to be released. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_OS [2] http://www.os2museum.com/wp/os2-for-powerpc-tidbits/a-look-inside-the-ibm-personal-computer-power-series-440-sandalfoot/ http://www.os2museum.com/wp/os2-for-powerpc-tidbits/a-look-i... [3] http://www.os2museum.com/wp/ibm-power-series-exotica/ http://www.os2museum.com/wp/ibm-power-series-exotica/ I don't recall the boxes looking like the image of the Power Series 600; they were black, desktop machines, too tall to be pizza-boxes.