3 ms·

All of that is true (still have my n-th generation Lions photocopy someplace), but Modula-2 was early '80s (1982?). By that timeframe you had lots of folks ship

by kjs3 4y ago

All of that is true (still have my n-th generation Lions photocopy someplace), but Modula-2 was early '80s (1982?). By that timeframe you had lots of folks shipping commercial Version 7 or System III variants (e.g. Unisoft, ISC, Microsoft (Xenix), Venix, Amdahl, Sun), with System V based systems just around the corner. These generally were, as the OP said, "proprietary and very expensive". I recall we still got a sweetheart deal on university licensing from AT&T (usually obtained only because it was required to get a 4BSD distribution tape from UCB...we won't discuss the 3B20s), but commercial shops were charged real cash. Or did I miss your point?

pjmlp 4y ago
Modula-2 was 1978 actually, and those systems were still a couple of years away as you mention. And even when they came to be, the real money they were charging (while licensing for peanuts the original source code) was still quite cheap versus paying for what the competition was asking for, hence why long term UNIX wiped out most of them, with IBM and Unisys mainframes/micros being the last standing survivors.