Post by h***@bbs.cpcn.comIBM obviously "lost money" in giving out free software; I don't thinkthey charged even for distribution tapes or documentation even in the1970s after unbundling; if it was a legacy free item, you got thepackage for free. (And IIRC, some unbundled fee products were stillquite cheap, esp as compared to today's software prices.)Anyway, the free software was IBM's 'loss leader' to build the utilityvalue of its computers. IBM unbundled this partly in response to anti-trust pressures, says Watson in his autobio.bundling back then is somewhat like flat-rate internet & cellphonepackages ... they immensively simplified things for the customer... although machines were leased prior to unbundling ... processors had"meter" (like home utilities). customers had standard 1st shift monthlycharge and additional for use about straight 1st shift. in that sense, alot of the bundling were similar to programs ... packaged deals for"leased" equipment. not long after unbundling, much of the install basewas converted from lease to sales (some unflattering comments thatmotivation was outgoing executive got big bonus because of the revenuespike, but it reduced future ongoing revenue). misc past postsmentioning 23jun69 unbundling announcementhttp://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundlebesides software, it wasn't unusual for there to be a "team" of SEs("system engineers") assigned at bigger customers; nearly always onsiteat the customer to provide customer with whatever assistance was neededfor using the computer. With unbundling, these SEs services also became"charged for". One of the big issues was lots of SE education had beenas sort of journeyman/trainee part of these SE "teams" onsite atcustomer installations. With unbundling, nobody was able to figure outwhat to do with "trainee" SEs (since if they were doing anything atcustomer site, it had to be a billable line item). The "HONE" systemswere several internal (virtual machine) CP67 datacenters, initially forp...
First seen: 2025-09-01 04:46
Last seen: 2025-09-01 12:47