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MS-DOS Not Stolen, New Forensic Analysis Concludes
theodp writes "Challenging earlier assertions that Bill Gates got the rewards due Gary Kildall, a forensic analysis conducted for the latest issue of IEEE Spectrum concludes that the landmark MS-DOS operating system which Bill Gates and Microsoft licensed to IBM was an original piece of work, not stolen goods. Using his company's CodeSuite forensic software, Bob Zeidman said he found no evidence that QDOS or MS-DOS was copied from or was a derivative of Gary Kildall's CP/M. So, what do you think of Microsoft expert witness (pdf) Zeidman's "if-the-codebase-doesn't-fit-you-must-acquit" arguments?"
I think it's interesting only as a matter of curiosity at this point.
Using his company's CodeSuite forensic software,
Alternate summary: CodeSuite found not to work as forensic software!
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
Literally in the process of reading a dismissal of that same analysis. See what you think...
Always thought the issue was that MS did not have a license to re-license (e.g. to IBM) the product which was created by 'Seattle Computer Products'.
No brain, no pain.
Actually, it's a fairly typical Microsoft attempt at a derivative: a copy of the superficial features on top of an unholy mess that shows that they don't understand the deeper concepts.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Windows? -> copy of MacOS Classic
Any more than Android or GNOME or KDE is a copy of Apple products?
"Whew!" said Mr. Kildall, from the grave. "I'm glad this slanderous attack on my programming skills has come to an end, and I have finally been exonerated."
It means:
Challenging earlier assertions that Bill Gates got the rewards [that were] due [for/to] Gary Kildall
And yes, it's standard English.
which is totally what she said
The PET was a much better design. And back then, it was all good... in fact, Chuck Peddle (inventor of the PET and the MOS 6502) actually helped Woz on some critical issues to get the Apple I up and running. But Peddle had a whole system approach, thus, all the other chips Commodore made to support the 6502. If you look at the Apple I/][ or may of the other early personal computers, you usually see a Microprocessor, some memory chips, and a vast sea of SSI and MSI parts from the TTL databook. If you look at early Commodore machines, you find all sorts of integration.
But there's a vast difference between "inspired by" and "copied". And even then, in layers. Steve Jobs saw the Xerox Alto and got inspired. Apple didn't really copy the UI, they actually left out some of the good stuff. And of course, the OS they created was vastly inferior, and the internals had nothing to do with the Xerox system. Microsoft did actually borrow some of Apple's stuff, but they's because they actually did exchange code. Most of Windows had nothing to do with MacOS, and the OS design was not something any experienced OS designer would have some up with (eg, the OS treating an application as a series of callbacks)... and that's not even counting all of the serialization Windows did in Win32 to prevent real multitasking.
Windows NT, on the other hand, was directly inspired by VAX/VMS (via Dave Cutler), but also ran a POSIX API layer from the get-go. But that was a standard by then, so no really a "copy" of UNIX anymore.
-Dave Haynie
QDOS was actually quite similar to CP/M in it's structure, and CP/M86 was different in that it actually made use of the improvements offered in the 8086 processor. QDOS was written as if an 8080 to 8086 translator had been used to code it. However MS-DOS quickly moved away from this. What Microsoft sold was much polished over the original QDOS and CP/M OS's. They quickly improved the disk structure, FAT12 and FAT16 are different enough from the original CP/M disk structure. What they all STILL have in common is the use of the 0XE5 IBM uninitialized data marker in the FAT to show available space. This was a quick and dirty hack that allowed a freshly formated diskette to be used without having to initialize a directory structure on it.
Those accusations still sound like sour grapes from Gary Kildall. The Microsoft - IBM deal was genius. Gary sounds upset he did not have the foresight to make it happen. He had his chance. Heck, MS even suggested that IBM talk to Gary and the CPM guys when they were looking for an operating system. But, Gary refused to play ball. Too bad.
So, Microsoft stepped up to the plate. They bought QDOS, worked with it and wrote MS-DOS. Sure, it was not an extraordinary operating system. But it wasn't terrible, and it worked like CP/M in a lot of ways because MS certainly took ideas from CP/M. That's perfectly OK (maybe not these days, software patents etc...) They were giving IBM and their customers what they wanted when Gary and Digital Research decided not to. That's the genius of Microsoft. Realizing the spectacular deal to be had and standing up to IBM to sign an agreement that would make them the biggest software company ever; keeping ownership of their software, regardless of how much big blue pushed them around. Sorry Gary, you missed out.
Lastly, I doubt the young Bill Gates would hypocritically allow his company to stoop to coping code after he wrote this and sent it to many of his future customers:
The system calls and lots of the design are clearly cloned. Anyone who used both CP/M and MS-DOS back in the day and who dabbled in assembly language programming on both would be able to spot it.
If the software industry had been as rife with patents (both functional and design) and other litigation tools back then as it is today, Microsoft wouldn't have gotten away with this particular way of copying.
(Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is left as an exercise for the reader.)
Where did this idea ever come from? "Everybody knows" that Gates bought QDOS from Kildall and nobody ever claimed that QDOS was a "copy of CP/M," not even Kildall himself. What was in dispute was whether Kildall was literally out to lunch or flying, or whatever, brushing off the meeting and selling a license for what turned out to be a pittance. That's the legend anyway, but he's not here on this planet anymore to defend himself.
FFS. Want to know where DOS came from? Just read Tim Patterson's blog. http://dosmandrivel.blogspot.com/
He discusses the design differences between the two and why he did what he did.
And if you're really curious and need to feed the inner nerd, go have a look at the CP/M source code.
http://www.cpm.z80.de/source.html
--
BMO
Gate's bought the DOS operating system and sold IBM a License. He didn't sell them the damn code.
Because of this, I have to wonder why everyone is suprised that MS Wants you to License Windows instead of buying it.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
The fact remains that he did die conveniently in a plane crash just after failing to come to terms with MS.
Not true.
On July 8, 1994, Kildall fell at a Monterey, California, biker bar and hit his head. The exact circumstances of the injury remain unclear; however, he had suffered problems with alcoholism in his later years. Various sources have claimed he fell from a chair, fell down steps, or was assaulted because he walked in to the Franklin Street Bar & Grill wearing Harley-Davidson leathers. He checked in and out of the hospital twice, and died three days later at the Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula. The coroner's report identified the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head. There was also evidence that he had experienced a heart attack, but an autopsy did not conclusively determine the cause of death.
Gary Kildall
Concurrent CP/M 3.1 and later, and single-user CP/M-86 with BDOS 3.3 and later (including DOS Plus), allow CP/M programs to access DOS-formatted discs via conventional BDOS calls, emulating (as far as possible) the behaviour of a normal CP/M filesystem. The behaviour is probably a good starting point for anyone writing a CP/M emulator which uses a hierarchical or non-CP/M filesystem.
The FAT filesystem in 16-bit CP/M-86
To me this says that the original or "normal" CP/M file system was not FAT.
From a WSJ review of Paul Allen's biography:
Past histories of Microsoft have said Mr. Allen's departure from the company was sparked by his first brush with cancer in 1982, when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease.
In that year, Mr. Allen says he eavesdropped on a discussion in the Microsoft offices in Bellevue, Wash., between Mr. Gates and Steve Ballmer, now the company's CEO, in which he heard the two men talking about Mr. Allen's recent lack of productivity and how they might dilute his equity in the company by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. Mr. Allen said he burst into the room and confronted Messrs. Gates and Ballmer, both of whom later apologized to him and backed down from their plan.
"I had helped start the company and was still an active member of management, though limited by my illness, and now my partner and my colleague were scheming to rip me off," he says in the book. "It was mercenary opportunism, plain and simple."
.
A spokesman for Microsoft said Mr. Ballmer had no comment.
Earlier efforts by Mr. Gates to whittle down his partner's stake in Microsoft were successful though, according to Mr. Allen.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Insider trading isn't "considered" illegal, it IS illegal - there is a law against it. It is illegal because that is the rule for being a publicly traded corporation - everyone gets info affecting the price of the stock at the same time. If that were not the case, people inside the company could profit at the expense of the other shareholders.
None of that has anything to do with private dealings. In fact, it is likely that Gates was under an NDA and could not say anything about the IBM deal, as IBM had not yet announced the PC. Divulging the IBM deal could not only have insider information ramifications, but remember that at the time IBM was under a consent decree that prohibited them from 'pre-announcing' anything.
If that were not the case, people inside the company could profit at the expense of the other shareholders.
Sure. Now why do we think that's wrong? What's the problem with allowing people inside the company to take advantage of the outsiders.? Couldn't the outsiders also get jobs within the company if they chose? Why is the asymmetric information considered a problem?
You're about to come back to me with some variation of the idea of fiduciary duty, which is simply restating the question. Why would they have a fiduciary duty to the stockholders? Why do we care if one group of people with superior information take advantage of another group of people? After all, anyone could get a job at the company. Anyone could -- in theory -- also become privy to the inside information. Why do we protect the shareholders from the reality of the market? What's the problem with asymmetric information in a capitalist market, and why do we feel the market distortions they cause to be evil?
When you get that answer, apply the principal to private dealings. Johnny Depp plays an evil man in "The Ninth Gate," a rare book dealer who visits bereaved families and buys rare books from the estate before the family realizes how valuable the books they sold are. The audience considers this to be evil behavior, and it sets up the moral corruption that a demon takes advantage of later in the script.
Why would we think those book sales are evil? After all, Depp is not doing aything illegal. He doesn't lie to them. He merely says "I can offer you this much for this book," and offers to get back to them later with offers on other books. Why do you think the audience boos and hisses at this behavior?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Gates, at the time, did NOT know how much DOS was going to be worth
OK, good, there's our problem and the source of our confusion. People have roundly condemned this deal because Gates knew EXACTLY how much DOS was going to be worth, down to the last dollar. What people have found so morally objectionable is that Gates already had the deal with IBM lined up by virtue of his mother's influence, and that he low-balled Kildall when Kildall did not know the entire story. Gates didn't look at Kildall's work and think, "Hmm, I bet I could sell this to someone," buy the program, take the risk, and then find a customer. People condemn this deal because Gates gave Kildall a haircut when there was NO risk, and by taking Kildall for a ride he would never have agreed to had everything been done aboveboard.
People pair this story with the Woz's "Breakout" story, where Steve Jobs got Wozniak to work four days straight to finish "Breakout," without telling him that Atari was offering a $5,000 bonus. Woz finished the work, Steve pocketed the money.
Neither story shows Gates or Jobs in a flattering light, and sometimes "being a sharp businessman" is just code for being a lousy human being.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."