FREE HISTORY OF COMPUTING COMPANIES LESSON
1969 — Software separates from the machine
IBM unbundling, Unix licensing, and an independent market
Software separates from the machine
When software, support, and hardware cease to be one price, software becomes a product category with its own firms and economics. Unix followed a different path: internal tool, academic distribution, portable interface, commercial licensing, and competing variants. The crucial asset shifts from a physical machine to source, compatibility, installed knowledge, and the legal right to evolve an interface.
Pricing and licensing boundaries decide whether software is a bundled feature, an independent product, a shared commons, or a controlled platform.
Institutional reconstruction
Compare bundled, per-machine licensed, source-licensed, and freely redistributable Unix-like systems. Predict adoption, revenue, fragmentation, contribution, and user exit cost under each arrangement.
Trace the scarce resource, coordination mechanism, power boundary, and newly possible failure.