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Microsoft Paternity Case Settled

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the dos'-baby-daddy dept.

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."

29 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Thrown Out by Major+Blud · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Thrown Out by arivanov · · Score: 4, Informative

      The FCBs as a file access method were a sufficient easter egg in themselves. No need to add any extra easter eggs methinks. Compared to that the Unix ripoff of using integer filehandles in the later dos versions was a godsend. By the way the thing about the unix likeliness was proudly stated by Microsoft in the old MSDOS programmer manual. Yep. Those were the days when Microsoft was proud to be Unix-alike.

      --
      Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
      http://www.sigsegv.cx/
    2. Re:Thrown Out by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My original JE on the topic:

      Apparently, despite Tim Patterson's denial, QDOS "ripped off" CP/M, specifically in the user interface, which in 1980 was the defining characteristic of software copyright law. QDOS of course was sold by Patterson to Bill Gates, who used it as the basis of PC Dos 1.0 and MS DOS, which was the creation of the monopoly that eventually became Windows.

      This is ALL about look and feel, which was 100% of the definition of software copyright in 1980.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    3. Re:Thrown Out by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not so sure of that- they ended up changing copyright law to get rid of those lawsuits, and today you need to prove direct copying of source code.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    4. Re:Thrown Out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      At the time (yes I was there, the beard is going white these days) QDOS was obviously just CP/M for the 8086. I recall little ads in the back of...god what was the name of that magazine? I forget, lots of S100 h/w, can't recall...more technical than Byte, which was good back then. And no it wasn't Dr. Dobbs. The 8086 came out and all these S100 cards got made and people needed something to run on them.

      Nastier are the rumors that much of QDOS was really ripped off. Don't know the truth to that but Intel did provide an 8080/8085 to 8086 assembler translator which was used by many developers to quickly get IBM PC versions of their programs to market. It did a lot of the work but you were stuck with compact or small memory model, never used it since all my stuff was Z80 (3D graphics in assembler, fun!). CP/M source was available. Put one and one together? I heard something about Kildall asking why a '$' was used to terminate the string passed to the console output call and that only he knew the real answer (could be a hack to reduce code size which was the common technique those days - no caches so jumping around to share subroutine exits was considered good form and could substantially reduce code size, MS BASIC was full of that sort of thing, that Paul Allen wrote some good code, pity he got sick when he did, it could've been quite a different world).

      Anyway we can't change history, yet, so its not worth worrying too much about it. Its not like CP/M was any great OS we should lament. {MS,PC}-DOS v1 did add some useful things that you either had to hack into CP/M yourself or get an add-on (another thing who's name I forget ... that Z80-only add on that vastly improved CP/M).

    5. Re:Thrown Out by misleb · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What they lost in copyright, they regained with frivolous and overreaching patents.

      Personally, I think the whole idea of "intellectual property" is absurd from the start. Owning an idea? Ridiculous. It is my humble prediction that so called "intellectual property" will one day be the downfall of capitalism as we know it. Or rather, it will make capitalism obsolete.

      -matthew

      --
      "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
    6. Re:Thrown Out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      > Grammar being the first?

      Gramps losing his wife isn't all that uncommon...

  2. Markets, not quality, decide predominance by athloi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Markets, not quality, decide predominance by ramdac · · Score: 3, Funny

      "if there's even dialup internet access."

      That's not exactly superior engineering is it?

    2. Re:Markets, not quality, decide predominance by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sorry but not going to happen. It probably wouldn't be all that much better. What sells in the long run is what works. Windows for all it's warts does work for most people. Mac OS/X is selling because it works better for some people and Linux is gaining ground because it works for others.
      If technical excellence was the only benchmark then Linux would also be in trouble. It is good but even Linux which I do like and use has it's warts. The difference is people are are free to fix the worst of them.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    3. Re:Markets, not quality, decide predominance by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, economics have something to do with marketing every now and then. We need to figure out the best technology at the best price. That sometimes results in inferior but cheaper technology taking root. I, for one, am glad that people other than the four richest kings of Europe own computers.

      --
      Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
    4. Re:Markets, not quality, decide predominance by fm6 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well, quality of the end product is not irrelevant to market viability. But basically, you're correct. What's particularly irritating about QDOS/MS-DOS is that it's success was pure blind luck. Bill Gates himself wanted to use CP/M — he may not be the genius he's marketed as, but he knew a de-facto standard when he saw one. QDOS, by contrast, barely deserved to be called an OS.

      TFA gets many facts wrong. One is the reason CP/M didn't get the favored OS status from IBM: Kildall thought the standard IBM NDA was to restrictive, so they couldn't even ask him for the product. It's true that IBM did offer CP/M (and also the p-System as alternatives, but their official choice was "PC DOS", and that's what made Patterson's insane kludge the de facto standard.

      As they say, it's better to be lucky than to be smart.

    5. Re:Markets, not quality, decide predominance by OldSoldier · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Grow up! The sooner you realize the old adage "if you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door" isn't true, the happier you'll be. I loved the Amiga, but a few years after waiting for the rest of the world to realize how wonderful that machine was I got the distinct impression that the powers-that-be at Amiga/Commodore were just waiting for the world to beat a path to their door.

      For any significant real-world problem there are at least 2 things that need to be solved. Call it "the core problem" and then "telling people that you've solved it", the technical side and the marketing side. Just to drive the point home even further, consider building a bridge across a river (tech side), but not interfacing that bridge to the existing road system (marketing side). Now imagine a somewhat less functional bridge (say 2 lanes instead of 4) but you don't have to go off-road to get to it. My point is... how many people would make the same complaint about the "demise" of that better bridge in a way that's analogous to the demise of the Amiga? VS how many people would think the bridge designers were idiots for not interfacing it to the existing road system?

      No, the things worthy of our pity are the failures that solved both problems and still failed in the marketplace. I don't think there are many examples of this, Beta vs VHS was close.

  3. Credit where none should be assigned. by Applekid · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
    1. Re:Credit where none should be assigned. by hardburn · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yup. No driver real model, passes everything important off to the BIOS (and ignores everything important that it can't), can't multitask on its own, a memory limitation that seems very obvious in retrospect, no sensible pipes, and a file system that's constantly losing track of its own mind. But apparently, someone wants credit for it.

      --
      Not a typewriter
  4. Re:"Dos"... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    >... "I am your father"

    "DO NOT WANT!"
    - Tux

  5. Great pain and mental anguish by Wiseman1024 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Great pain and mental anguish by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 5, Funny

      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?

      Because it was better than the previous option, where instead of rule of law we had rule of the retarded hemophiliacs that Europe choose to call "Aristocrats".

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    2. Re:Great pain and mental anguish by Myopic · · Score: 2, Insightful

      -1, Troll

      Come on, mods.

    3. Re:Great pain and mental anguish by jschrod · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Aristocrats -- you mean, like, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Stanford, Carnegie, Ford, Flagler, and all the other robber barons? Or do you mean their modern equivalent -- the Bush family estate, Kennedies, the persons who control Haliburton?

      They might not have "von" or "de" or other aristocratic parts in their name, but they are aristocrats for all that matters. Remember the duck test: When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.

      --

      Joachim

      People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]

  6. Re:"Dos"... by jmyers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In this case Darth Bill killed off all the younglings and there is no son to challenge the father.

  7. Settlement details by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Tim Paterson will have to pay to put Windows through college.

  8. Drama by dgun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But then Kildall was motivated by technical excellence, not by the need to dominate his fellow man

    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.
  9. I do not think it means what you think it means by monkeySauce · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  10. Re:Article bias by Teun · · Score: 4, Funny

    "The Register" is on par with Slashdot, quality-wise: completely unprofessional, and hype-driven.
    And judging by your regular postings you feel quite at home here ;)
    --
    "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  11. Re:Article bias by cfoushee · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Its a good thing I my filter set to read all comments otherwise I wouldn't even see your guys funny and insightful comments regarding the bias of the article that will no doubt remain at a score less than 2. Remember folks that something can be bias even its "true". What most of us want from journalistic publications are the facts. Leave the pop shots to forms were people can debate their opinions.

  12. Patterson and others borrowed from CP/M bigtime by postbigbang · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  13. Re:Article bias by c6gunner · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Maybe you should stop hanging out with Marxists....

  14. MS-DOS Encylopedia -1986 by JJBrooks13 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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