Talk:Open system (computing)

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Paragraph 3 reads like an ad for linux on zSeries. I think that it is highly debatable whether zSeries is 'widely considered' to be an open system in light of VM, MVS, etc, which are some of the most closed systems with any market share. Plus, I am not really sure that the mainframe runs the most linux instances, or more importantly, whether the number of virtualized instances has anything to do with open system-ness. 172.146.211.249 03:22, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] last paragraph: 2 quibbles

good article for the most part. two quibbles with final paragraph:

1. significance of turn of the century

while the turn of the century is a convenient historical milestone, i'm not sure that it marked a sudden acceptance of open systems. as i recall the process, it was more gradual with several significan influences, including but not limited to:

-- the increasing poplarity of the C programming language and interfaces to C libraries from other languages.

-- the posix api standard.

-- the increased popularity and influence of The Internet and Internet protocols.

-- the increased popularity of SQL as an interface between applications and database managers.

-- the broad acceptance of the PCI bus which provided a common way of attaching expansion cards to host computers (and ended the MCA vs EISA vs NuBus vs proprietary conflicts).

-- the early broad acceptance of the IBM PC implementation of the Centronics parralel port interface and the IBM AT implementation of the RS-232 serial port interface, followed by the success of ethernet, SCSI, firewire, and USB.

i don't think any one of such examples were decisive. over a decade or more, folks began to notice that broadly accepted, vendor neutral methods of connecting bits and pieces (of hardware or software) together had advantages.

2. open systems vs open source

while the terms "open system" and "open source" may compete for attention in the marketing world, AFAIK they refer to very different things rather than being differnt degrees of the same thing. open source necessarily more open that and open system.

the open systems concept has to do with how components connect to each other, not how they work internally. open souce lets anybody who wants to look inside the components themselves. they're different ideas (as far as i can tell). --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.146.211.249 (talk • contribs) 03:22, 5 June 2006.

[edit] "Open systems" as a social phenomenon

I am sad that the social meaning for open systems has been rejected:

"It can also mean systems configured to allow unrestricted access by people and/or other computers; this article only discusses the first meaning."

Personally, I experienced endless Synergy with the Sun and then Linux OSs. I think that the discussion is valuable because the social Synergy occupies a layer just above the technical interoperability making it part of the same thing. I think it is also significant that the innovation of the period from the late 80s to the late 90s was unprecedented. Since the tech crash, all I have seen for innovation is miniaturization; nothing significantly new is appearing even on the distant horizon. There has been a drop in costs, but the Moore's principle coefficent has dropped by 75% for basic computer parts that I buy.

Here is an article I wrote on the fun we had building the Internet Synergistically: http://linux-society.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_linux-society_archive.html --John van v 02:52, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi John,

The wording you quote is mine -- the article as I found it back in July 2006 did indeed only talk about open systems as an interoperability phenomenon, with the exception of one line:

It can also be defined as a system that allows access by other systems, hence 'open' system.

So the article really wasn't talking about social synergy even before then -- but I changed the wording precisely because I thought that aspect, although not in the scope of this article (in my opinion), was still worth discussing. (What I had been thinking about when I did my edit was the MIT AI Lab systems that were available for open access via the ARPANET back in the late '70s / early '80s.)

I think it would be great if you could create an article to discuss the social aspect, maybe using your article as the foundation for it, and it could be linked to from this article and others. But I still do think it's a different topic from open systems as covered on this page.--NapoliRoma 19:09, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Or maybe not so great. I skimmed the article, and while I admire its attempt to link humanism, 1960s counterculture, computing and psychotherapy(?), it's very idiosynchratic. I wouldn't want an article on "open systems" using it as a primary source – especially since it mentions the phrase only in passing. JöG 22:17, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other meaning of open system

In the operating system security and safety field (I think it comes from the Denning 1976's paper "Fault-tolerant operating systems"), open systems are the one where "everything not forbidden is allowed"; by comparison in closed systems "everything not allowed is forbidden". Open system are simpler to design to implement but are also much less secure.

Consequently in the UNIX page when one writes "UNIX became synonymous with open system" was at first because UNIX was an Open system is that sense (being a simple operating systems on minicomputers; closed systems were often designed for bigger mainframes), meaning that it wasn't as secure as standard mainframes operating systems like MULTICS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.228.154.4 (talk) 11:53, 21 July 2007

Are you saying that this part of Unix

Both Unix and the C programming language were developed by AT&T and distributed to government and academic institutions, causing both to be ported to a wider variety of machine families than any other operating system. As a result, Unix became synonymous with "open systems".

implies that Unix is insecure, because a 1976 paper used the term "open system" to mean "insecure system"? I'm sorry, but that makes no sense. JöG 21:59, 28 July 2007 (UTC)