> 3) Do they REALLY believe that it was impossible for that Amdahl
> employee do get offical permission to run said program from powers
> that be at Amdahl with the power to grant said permission? If so,
> how would they know that?
It depends what 'program' we're talking about - Amdahl had several.
However - from one comment made last year - I believe we're talking
about 'Merlin'.
Merlin was a significant asset, despite Amdahl's legendary failure to
spot the BCR 15,0 problem. At one time Amdahl was negotiating an
exchange with IBM - the rights to Merlin in exchange for some of the
ESAME stuff. Once the decision was made (by Fujitsu, following a now
infamous meeting with Alan Bell) to abandon 64-bit development, these
negotiations turned into straight cash-for-rights.
I have heard several views on the outcome of these discussions - they
concur, but are not conclusive. What I consider the most likely
scenario is that Merlin was built under and was subject to (at least
parts of) TIDA, but also that by the time certain testing was done
the rights to the package actually belonged to IBM.
So - did Amdahl have the right to permit Merlin to be used to
validate non-IBM and non-Amdahl products? Almost certainly not. In
the first place TIDA would preclude it, and in the second it may not
even have been theirs to dispose of.
I can say with absolute certainty that anyone caught using Merlin for
an unauthorized purpose would not be allowed to return to their desk.
|
| 
