Soon after this, they received the visit of their in-house IBM engineer. Yes, in those days, they actually had an
IBM engineer working full-time on the client site. Proudly, they showed him this clever little software. The
guy asked for the source code, which they supplied, open source-like. The blue-suited engineer thanked them
and walked away with the source. My dad and his colleagues just went back to work.
So soon they forget...
IBM was prosecuted for anti-trust because they wouldn't sell the software or hardware, but would just lease it, and own anything written on their machines. They got their pee-pee slapped big time. I believe the sunset provision on the settlement just passed.
All big computer companies will be as big assholes as we will let them be.
--
Slashdot Mirror
Soon after this, they received the visit of their in-house IBM engineer. Yes, in those days, they actually had an IBM engineer working full-time on the client site. Proudly, they showed him this clever little software. The guy asked for the source code, which they supplied, open source-like. The blue-suited engineer thanked them and walked away with the source. My dad and his colleagues just went back to work.
So soon they forget...
IBM was prosecuted for anti-trust because they wouldn't sell the software or hardware, but would just lease it, and own anything written on their machines. They got their pee-pee slapped big time. I believe the sunset provision on the settlement just passed.
All big computer companies will be as big assholes as we will let them be.
--