[cap-talk] The TCSEC influence on computersecurity/systems (was: Re: Horton at HotSec...)

[Stiegler, Marc D]

> In 1990 or 1991 we tried to negotiate a KeyKOS license with 
> him. He wanted a $10,000 royalty per copy. By that time, the 
> UNIX royalty was somewhere between $5 and $25 depending on 
> volume. Today, of course, commodity operating systems are free.

This was a pretty popular, easy-to-fall-into, failure mode. Almost no
one remembers today that, when the first IBM PC came out, it did not
come with a bundled MS-DOS operating system. Rather, the purchaser of
the PC picked, at purchase time, to either buy the MS-DOS operating
system from Microsoft (a little-known company) or to buy CPM-86 from the
premier desktop operating system vendors at the time, Western Digital.
IBM did not care at all which one you picked. There was no significant
technical merit for one over the other; CPM-86 was not upwardly
compatible from CPM, so there was not an established based of
applications for CPM-86 that would make it more valuable. However,
Western Digital, knowing that they owned the prestigious brand, offered
their os for a prestigious price. MS-DOS cost about 1/4th as much, as I
recall. And thus was history made.

--marcs