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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (4910)	2/1/1998 10:49:00 AM
From: K. M. Strickler	Respond to of 74651

Big Blue may not have 'hoarded' DOS, but you can bet the OS for the System 360 was not public, at least not when I worked for them. The 'BIG OZ' boys did their work in locked rooms, and analyzed the 'core' dumps for the 'renter' (you didn't by the computers then, weren't for sale) and told the 'customer' what happened. The analysis would quickly lead to the customers 'software' failings, but if it was a 'hardware' problem, that information wasn't always presented! I WAS THERE! I was under the impression that IBM kind of 'contracted' MSFT to write the DOS, with the exception that MSFT got to keep the code! Now that WAS A CONTRACT! Ken

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (4910)	2/2/1998 2:57:00 AM
From: Gerald Walls	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Gerald you must be very young There were three OS's introduced with the original PC --- USCD Pascal, CP/M and DOS. DOS source code was published by IBM. MSFT retained the right to license the OS to other manufacturers. IBM did not exercise a monopoly over the OS. You seem to think they did. That means you do not understand anything about this industry and how it developed and should definitely go back to school and start over again. What is your problem? What happened to you to turn you into such a bitter old man? Actually I'm a 34-year old software engineer with a Masters of Computer Science degree and 12-1/2 years of experience varying from howitzer fire solution computers to embedded life-critical avionics, from user interfaces to protocol IO, real-time interrupts and bare-metal timing-dependent device interfacing, in languages including PLM, C, Pascal, Ada and at least four different assembly languages for both CISC and RISC-type processors. For some of my work I had to blow UVPROMs to put my software in the box. Yes, IBM licensed DOS from Microsoft and allowed them to retain the rights to it. Stupid mistake by IBM. They should have bought it outright. I said that IBM developed and owned the IBM PC (hardware) and its ROM BIOS (firmware) not DOS (software/operating system). Clone makers had to develop a compatible non-infringing BIOS for their machines. Once they did this the machine really was an open standard. There were minor differences in the BIOS, though. For example, if you turned on an IBM PC without a disk a BASIC interpreter appeared while with a clone you got an error message. The original PC-DOS used the BASIC embedded in the ROM while the original MS-DOS used the Gee Whiz BASIC (GW-BASIC) on the boot disk. IBM belatedly realized they had let the horse out of the barn and attempted to corral it (hardware-wise) with the Microchannel fiasco. Where did IBM publish the source code for DOS where it could be purchased for reuse or without having to sign a non-disclosure agreement? On the other hand you could spend all your time at Fry's and become a salesman or something equally useful. I did have a nasty retort but I won't post it because I don't want to stoop to your level and have a flame war.