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RE: Government purchases should require open source, not just POS

--- From a message sent by David E. Y. Sarna on 5/4/98 4:43 AM ---

>Having been around in the old days, I can testify  that IBM did make
>source available on request, on the theory that since the software only
>ran on IBM mainframes (there were no compatibles) it wasn't useful on
>competitors' boxes, which had a very different instruction set. In those
>days hardware included the right for unlimited software; at most the
>customer paid a shipping charge.  It was only gradually, at the end of
>the 1960s that IBM recognized that software was a separate source of
>revenue, and as IBM did so did others, creating "packages" or the
>software industry as we now know it.

And wasn't IBM also eventually compelled to unbundle its software from 
its hardware?

   Mitch Stone
   Editor, Boycott Microsoft
   http://www.vcnet.com/bms 
 +---
   While we're all very dependent on technology, 
   it doesn't always work --- Bill Gates