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Microsoft Paternity Case Settled
Many readers have written to tell us that last week, a Judge dismissed the defamation law suit brought by Tim Paterson, who sold a computer operating system to Microsoft in 1980, against journalist and author Sir Harold Evans and his publisher Little Brown. The software became the basis of Microsoft's MS-DOS monopoly, and the basis of its dominance of the PC industry."
This case really needed to be dismissed. Anyone who has ever used DOS and CP/M can notice obvious similarities. Still I think it was wrong from Evans to say that Paterson ripped off CP/M. Even CPM/M contains features that you could claim are rip-offs of other operating systems (file systems, command-lines, etc.)
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
I love the cheap jab at the end as if to suggest that his failings were anything but a complete lack of business sense.
It's a sad but iron fact of life that market viability and not the quality of the end product defines what lives and what ends up with the Amiga and other good ideas in the storeroom of history. This doesn't mean I like it. In fact, I'd like to live in a society where superior engineering was accepted over superior marketing. Any ideas? Will move, if there's even dialup internet access.
technical writing / development
So, wait, someone actually wants to claim credit for being the man behind MS-DOS?
In other news, No One Admits To Singing, Writing, Producing Nation's No. 1 Song.
More Twoson than Cupertino
"But then Kildall was motivated by technical excellence, not by the need to dominate his fellow man."
... "I am your father"
The Shocking Results Are In!
Anybody starting a trial because something gave him "great pain and mental anguish" needs to be beaten. Hardly.
Meh. Why is America so ridiculously obsessed with trials, laws, and all that crap they love such as patents or imaginary property, to the point of turning so-called justice into an industry of fat, vicious thugs who make up anything to sue for a living, exploit ludicrous legal loopholes, or live on patents? They have degraded and degenerated the concept of "justice" to the point I can no longer speak out loud the word "justice" without feeling I have to wash my mouth. I'm glad I'm not American, and I'll avoid setting a foot on it, lest I get sued for making a bad face to a pickpocket, causing him great mental injury. At this rate, America's so-called justice system will be worse than third world dictatorships', if it already isn't.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
Tim Paterson will have to pay to put Windows through college.
I'm a fan of Gary Kildall's, but was the last part of that statement even necessary?
Why interject commentary in an otherwise fairly objective and good article?
FAQs are evil.
Sounds like he was suing because they took away his fame.
But that would defameation, not defamation.
Although since we are talking about DOS, perhaps deinfameation would have been more accurate.
"In the case of personal computing...Bill Gates, you are NOT the father!"
*Bill runs backstage crying*
Seattle DOS was only one.... the source code to MP/M and CP/M floated around freely. CP/M itself is a re-do of RT-11, a horrible DEC OS.
After the success of MS/IBM DOS, he started selling his own version again. It was less weird (compatibility wise) than versions of MS-DOS, but never really took off. DRDOS survives to this day in one form and another.
Then Microsoft tried to make DOS realistic with subdirectories, and other 'inventions' borrowed from other places. The whole operating system industry was/is highly incestuous.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
This has a video that sums up CP/M, Gary Kildall, IBM, and the MS saga. It's very pertinent to this article. http://www.archive.org/details/GaryKild
Bill Gates says, "there can only be one" in reference to competing operating sytems in this video.
And $50K ought to be enough for anybody.
I didn't know CP/M had hard drive support at all in the version that got ripped off- a 5MB Winchester drive in those days was in the low $1500 range. But the standard was 33% in the old days. You had to change 33% of the user interface. Certainly ripping of most of the interrrupt code was NOT changing the interface 33%.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Many of the command names are same as UNIX (fther of Linux), which had been around since the early 70s. Since UNIX command names are gnerally obscure, it was a clear case of "borrowing". No one cares.
I think there was some kid saying Gates was its father.
free money
Anyone who's looked at the BIOS calls in CP/M and DOS for more than 5 minutes knows that DOS is CP/M updated to run on 16-bit hardware (or a rip-off of it). That's all the time that the judge needed.
Maybe I've gone off the deep end finally.. The more I think about computers and microsoft and all that- it seems that what we need -is- a monopoly for operating systems (only!)- so that we're all operating on the same page and makes progress easier. What if the government bought the Windows portion of MS and gave away the OS for free (well, subsidized by funding) to all US citizens and charged other countries for it. Then we'd have the monopoly without the price. Hopefully, the development would continue and evolve.
I was referring to the general case at hand technology is more than just software, it includes hardware where my statement makes more sense. Also, from what I've heard CPM was more expensive on IBM PC.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
In this 1,054 page encylopedia with forward by Bill Gates and printed by Microsoft it states in the first chapter titled "The Story Begins": "That's when Gates, who was still a student at Harvard, flew to Albuquerque, checked into the Hilton Hotel with a stack of yellow legal pads, and asked not to be disturbed. Five days later, he checked out of the hotel, yellow pads filled, and started typing code into a DEC PDP-11 mainframe, ... After five days, Disk BASIC was up and running on the Altair. ... The file-handling routines in stand-alone Disk BASIC became, in turn, the model for the operationg system that would eventually be known as MS-DOS."
If I recall correctly, Bill had to retract this at one point and correctly credit someone else. Gee, I wonder how much my encyclopedia is worth these days....(if I could only get bill to sign my copy...)
Jj
Evans: C:. ^Z.
Judge: Case dismissed. You bastards.
'if you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door'
.. :)
No, you license a mouse trap to a company whilst not actually owning one, then go out and buy one from a third company and get the first company to pay for it. Later on you license the same mouse trap to other companies as first company neglected to get an exclusive deal. Later on first company tries and fails to wriggle out through the invention of their own mOuSse2. YOU take the money and spend it on MouseNT trap instead. Fool me once, shame on you etc
You also declare all other rodent incarceration methods as violating your IP and make vague litigation noises in the press. You then offer cross-licensing deals with said other companies as long as they agree they are violating your IP. If anyone sues YOU for copying, then your defence is that they all stole it from Xerox PARC back when we all attended that big demo.
Re:Markets, not quality, decide predominance (Score:5, Informative)
davecb5620@gmail.com
Agree as to the not-so-horrendous nature of RT-11. The details of command line parsing are not a particularly good index of similarity. I worked with both operating systems, and the design of CP/M definitely owed a debt to that of RT-11.
--
phunctor
Oh, they existed all right. I had one to develop on--with an Osborne. The processor was removed, a plug put in its socket, and the processor into that. A ribbon cable extended from the case, with (iirc) an edge connector.
The catch was that CP/M (including the first couple of renditions of CP/M-86 had no notion of directories. It did, however, have 16 (?) numbered "users", which could mask the available files. ISTR that default was user 0 which could see everything, and that the other users were accessed by a command ("User n"?). I want to say that there was one other special user, but it's been almost 25 years . . .
The first version of CP/M to use MS-DOS executables (2.0?) could not, however, enter MS-DOS directories. Not even CCP/M--though it could multitask MS-DOS commands (on an 8086!).
hawk
another solution to hard drives on 8 bits was done with a 5 meg corvus drive for the apple. It appeared to the apple dos as 35 floppy drives on the same controller . . . I believe the price tag was $5k . . .
hawk