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Comment by tannhaeuser | Hacker News Reader

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tannhaeuser·

BS = Betriebssystem = operating system, ie not what you might think it means ;)

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Except in this case it stands for Business Server ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BS2000

I'd like to believe that (though Business Server doesn't even have the excuse of being in German language) but I can't find anything about that term on the linked Wikipedia page.

Check the BS2000 logo in the top right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BS2000#/media/File:BS2000.png

It's extremely unlikely that Siemens used a name like "Business Server" in the 70s.

My guess would be that it originally did mean "Betriebssystem", and the "Business Server" was coined a lot later for the non-German-speaking part of the world.

And have a look at [1], if you compare "PBS" (Platte Betriebssystem) to "BS 1000", both running on a 4004-45, it would be really really strange if this "BS" meant "Business Server" in 1968.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Siemens-Computer

It never occurred to me that BS would mean anything other than Betriebssystem considering the naming scheme of main competitor IBM (OS/390, OS/400) but that logo I didn't notice tells otherwise, so TIL. Still, the logo looks bland and generic, the kind of which a developer would use for his home project, so I'm still not 100% convinced ;)

I often have the same problem with POS = point of sale. Another term often comes to mind.

But "Our POS terminals are powered by Fujitsu's BS" is such a wonderful sentence...

Would make for some amusing troubleshooting videos: "So what do you do when having problems with your BS POS?"

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