Had UNIX been sold as commercial product, most likely the winner would have been something like VAX VMS, not Multics, which was anyway an OS for DoD only.
Or something else, definitely not UNIX, there was plenty of other alternatives when free would not have been an option, and UNIX haters book is still quite up to date in some of the original warts.
> Had UNIX been sold as commercial product, most likely the winner would have been something like VAX VMS
In the 70s and 80s, a lot of universities used VM/CMS for research and teaching. But then they ended up all migrating to some combination of UNIX and PCs running DOS/Windows.
In the 1980s, IBM was seriously pursuing the idea of a VM/CMS-based workstation – they ended up actually releasing the IBM 7437 VM/SP Technical Workstation in 1988, and it was adopted by some customers, primarily those who used the mainframe-based CAD systems CADAM and CATIA. But it just couldn't compete with UNIX workstations in the market. In an alternative timeline where UNIX was much less successful, it might have stood more of a chance.
Had VMS been any more wide spread, there would have been a VMS haters book.
I could make a start, referring to the default editor, EDIT. In the early nineties (no idea, what version that actually was) it was possible (and there was no warning) to edit the same file in multiple sessions (using multiple terminals by not-so-well communicating team members). Only the last file saved remained on disk.
Or something else, definitely not UNIX, there was plenty of other alternatives when free would not have been an option, and UNIX haters book is still quite up to date in some of the original warts.