🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <226@news.duke.edu>, magidj@cellbio.duke.edu (Jonathan Magid)
writes:
|> for example (i may be mistaken on this one), i believe that ibm invented
|> the idea of virtual memory (please no flames... just correct me if i'm
|> wrong and refer me to alt.folklore.computers... :)) now would
|> it be a Good Thing for everybody and their brother to have to invent 
|> a new way of solving this problem when a good one exists?

The idea that IBM invented virtual memory has come up several times in this
thread. No one else has jumped on it, so I guess I will.  No, IBM did not invent
it.  Paging was a product of academic research, U of Manchester with the Atlas
machine if I remember correctly ( I put most of my undergrad texts in storage a
while back, which is why I hoped someone else would answer this).  Not only did
IBM not invent it, they were about the last computer company to offer it.  For
quite a while IBM claimed that the technique was un-reliable.  Then they
released something called "virtual memory", which they claimed to have invented.
When pressed, IBM sales people would admit than the only thing IBM invented was
the name, but then would go on to claim that their adoption of it established it
in the marketplace.  Nothing is standard until IBM uses it, as they used to say.
I will admit that virtual memory is a neat term.

Judging on the behavior of IBM at the time, I am sure if they had invented it,
they would have sued anyone else who used it.  After all, they claimed to have
copy righted the object code format of the 360 mainframes.  Amdahl won that
battle.  IBM also tried to make it ilegal for third party people to make IO
devices which plugged into IBM's IO channel.  That was also thown out in court. 
IBM tried to prevent 360 clones (the mainframes, not the Intel CPU) sales by
refusing to sell their OS to non-IBM hardware owners.  The courts made them stop
bundling the software with the hardware.  In what the trade journals of the time
claimed was the biggest anti-trade lawsuit ever, the feds took IBM to court for
obnoxious tactics - including getting MIS staff fired who tried to buy non-IBM
hardware ( as they used to say in MIS - "No one ever got fired for recomending
IBM").   However the trial dragged on until Ronny was elected president.  The
new admin disliked anti-trust suits and that was that.

During the time that IBM was an even bigger evil than LPF thinks Apple is, the
company loved by engineers was DEC.  However, they had their quirks.  Remember
DEC's patents on Dectape and the Q bus?  DEC only liscened companies if their
products didn't compete with any DEC products.  Third party hardware people
complained that liscenses were revoked if DEC came out with a new product that
competed with something.  Both of those patents failed court challenge.  By the
way, DEC had at least one copy righted language - Focal.  It was Basic, more or
less.

More recently, when the neXt machine first came out, a Mac programmer thought
the windows looked really cool so he hacked the Mac's windowing system to look
like the neXt's windows.  The code was distributed around the usual places
freeway places, including the Usenet Mac binary group.  However, it quickly
followed by a recall.  As related on the network, Steve Jobs himself paid a
visit to the programmer and said the hack was nice but unless it was recalled,
neXt would be forced to sue.  I understand LPF makes a huge distinction between
this and an actual lawsuit, but that is over-subtle to me.  By the way, I
complied with this request, as I draw a big distinction between "grey scale can
make windows look neat" and "lets exactly match the windows os a specific
company". 

Basically I'm saying, if Apple's lawsuit were as slimy as LPF thinks it is, all
it means is that Apple is starting to catch with all the other big computer
companies.

Bruce Seiler    seiler@compass-da.com
Note: Compass Design Automation does not pay me to have opinions on things like
this.