> Had UNIX been sold as commercial product, most likely the winner would have been something like VAX VMS In the 70s and 80s, a lot of universities used VM/CMS

> Had UNIX been sold as commercial product, most likely the winner would have been something like VAX VMS In the 70s and 80s, a lot of universities used VM/CMS for research and teaching. But then they ended up all migrating to some combination of UNIX and PCs running DOS/Windows. In the 1980s, IBM was seriously pursuing the idea of a VM/CMS-based workstation – they ended up actually releasing the IBM 7437 VM/SP Technical Workstation in 1988, and it was adopted by some customers, primarily those who used the mainframe-based CAD systems CADAM and CATIA. But it just couldn't compete with UNIX workstations in the market. In an alternative timeline where UNIX was much less successful, it might have stood more of a chance.