Computer Systems |
A comic book, drawn by Bob Bacon, inspired by the events that occurred during the days of the IBM Future Systems project.
In September 1971, IBM chartered a major leap into the future called FS (Future Systems), which was intended to replace System/370 as the new hardware and software architecture for IBM and the world. At that time, there were many enthusiastic supporters, as well as quite a few Dilberts who could see a disaster looming. To understand the FS project, imagine a cast of thousands, which included most of the best and brightest in IBM as supporting actors, dozens of pointy-haired bosses in the middle, and a very strong-willed executive at the top, who had a hardware background, but no understanding of software design and development. There were some very good managers who understood the situation, but they were frustrated by the impossibility of turning the battleship around. Those who tried were branded as "not team players."
In 1971, the warning signs were obvious to anyone who understood
the complexities of hardware and software design, but upper-level
management would not listen.
By 1973, ironic jokes began to circulate, such as
"Moses went into the desert and saw FS." The acronym FS is a pun
on the Hebrew word 
, which means "nothing".
In 1974, the symptoms were becoming obvious to everyone, but
most people were afraid to ask "career-killing questions" in public.
That's when I wrote Memo 125, which earned me
the everlasing enmity of certain managers who had not yet prepared
their alibis.
From observation of many standards efforts and participation in some, I have formulated a principle called the law of standards: Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X. This law does not imply that standards efforts are doomed to failure, but it does imply that evolutionary projects are more likely to succeed than revolutionary ones.
Note added in 2006: The conclusion drawn in 2000 was that the Linux API would become the de facto standard for software development. That has come to pass. Major software companies, such as Oracle, do all their software development on Linux and port the result to Windows and other systems. Although IBM does software development on AIX (IBM's brand of Unix), they made AIX Linux compatible. Linux is the universal source: anything implemented on Linux can be ported to any other system. Windows is the universal sink: anything implemented on Windows cannot be ported to anything else.
Copyright ©2000, 2006 by John F. Sowa.
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