Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:

> On 2023-08-22, 51b.1055 <51b.1055@qtq9.net> wrote:
>
>> DOS was stolen - a rip-of of DR CP/M. Gates bought it
>> from the thief.
>
> "Stolen" is perhaps too strong a word. Seattle Computer
> Products had developed an S-100 processor board using Intel's
> new 8086 chip, and needed some sort of operating system to
> run on it. Tim Paterson basically cloned CP/M. The result
> was initially called QDOS, for "Quick and Dirty Operating
> System", but was offically renamed 86-DOS. Bill Gates
> needed a quick and dirty operating system for the new
> IBM Personal Computer... and the rest is history.
>

My real issue with Microsoft, going back to the DOS days, is that they
made mediocre products and their rapacious business practices kept us
using mediocre software for far longer than we should have been. (A lot
of people are still using mediocre Microsoft software.) I think that
Gates et al acted to hold back the computer industry, even if that
wasn't their outright intention.

I'm really glad that I was finally able to get my hands on NetBSD,
FreeBSD, Linux, etc. on reasonable and affordable hardware at home. That
was the beginning of my "emancipation." :-)

Bobbie Sellers <bliss@mouse-potato.com> writes:

> On 8/21/23 22:09, 51b.1055 wrote:
>> On 8/21/23 8:57 PM, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>>> On Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:56:30 -0400, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>>>
>>>> tDOS could run off a 360 KB floppy in as little as 64kb
>>>> of ram (a little more WAS desirable). There was a little
>>>> space left over on the floppy. CP/M could do it in a
>>>> little less. You can argue they're *almost* the same OS.
>>>
>>> CP/M is from 1974, MS-DOS 1980, Linux 1991. A lot happened in between.
>>   DOS was stolen - a rip-of of DR CP/M. Gates bought it
>>   from the thief. Hmmm ... 'retro' lawsuits are all the
>>   rage now and SOMEBODY inherited the rights to all that
>>   DR stuff, so, how much money DID M$ make from DOS ??? :-)
>>   Combining most of the PIP functions "live" on the CL
>>   was a good idea though.
>
> Actually it was supposed to be a work-a-like not a simple
> copy. MS got it for cheap but later a deal was struck and the
> ultimate payment increased considerably to the mutual satisfaction
> of
>

I've seen claims that some of the QDOS code had a strong resemblance to
CP/M code. I don't know if it wasn't that strong a resemblance, or if
Kildall didn't want to sue at that point, or if software copyright and
patent law at that time didn't allow for a successful lawsuit.

On Sat, 30 Sep 2023 11:01:38 -0400, Bud Frede wrote:
>
> My real issue with Microsoft, going back to the DOS days, is that they
> made mediocre products and their rapacious business practices kept us
> using mediocre software for far longer than we should have been. (A lot
> of people are still using mediocre Microsoft software.) I think that
> Gates et al acted to hold back the computer industry, even if that
> wasn't their outright intention.

That I read a lot, and tend to agree. As with any monopoly and heavy
advertising, people only tend to know that one thing they offer.

Heck, we should have flying cars and hover boards since 2015! :-)
--
Andreas

On 30/09/2023 16:01, Bud Frede wrote:
> I think that
> Gates et al acted to hold back the computer industry, even if that
> wasn't their outright intention.
Yes, and no. By enforcing a standard API, applications leapt ahead.
By being first on the block with an *affordable* GUI they pushed that
meme along nicely too.
But by pushing other operating systems out when their's was mediocre at
best, they did us all a disservice

--
"Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social
conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the
windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.) "

Alan Sokal

On 9/30/23 12:07, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Sep 2023 11:01:38 -0400, Bud Frede wrote:
>>
>> My real issue with Microsoft, going back to the DOS days, is that they
>> made mediocre products and their rapacious business practices kept us
>> using mediocre software for far longer than we should have been. (A lot
>> of people are still using mediocre Microsoft software.) I think that
>> Gates et al acted to hold back the computer industry, even if that
>> wasn't their outright intention.
>
> That I read a lot, and tend to agree. As with any monopoly and heavy
> advertising, people only tend to know that one thing they offer.

It's also why doing anything slightly complex blows peoples mind.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On 2023-09-30, Bud Frede <frede@mouse-potato.com> wrote:

> I've seen claims that some of the QDOS code had a strong resemblance to
> CP/M code. I don't know if it wasn't that strong a resemblance, or if
> Kildall didn't want to sue at that point, or if software copyright and
> patent law at that time didn't allow for a successful lawsuit.

Oh, it was a strong resemblance, all right. Even a lot of the BIOS
and BDOS calls were practically identical. And they copied CP/M's
convention of using hex 1A as an end-of-file marker, even though it
was unnecessary, since the MS-DOS file system stored the size of a
file down to the byte, rather than as a number of 128-byte sectors.
That damned hex 1A character has cost me enough lost data that I
have declared war on it, eliminating it from data files at every
opportunity.

One thing MS-DOS didn't inherit from CP/M was the COPY command's
refusal to copy zero-length files, something which PIP would happily
do. Back around 1986 I had a beta version of our system go down at
a customer site and take a month's worth of data with it, thanks to
this little "feature" - because not only would COPY not copy an empty
file, it would delete a file if it already exists. For example, if
FOO is an empty file and BAR exists, empty or not, the command

COPY FOO BAR

has exactly the same effect as

DEL BAR

I'm not sure whether this has been fixed - I design everything
so that it will never have the opportunity to bite me again.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They offer a huge range of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | world-class vulnerabilities
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | that only Microsoft can provide.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- druck <news@druck.org.uk>