Re: [OT] Free Software Company

["dodobh@xxxxxxxxxxx" <dodobh@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Radhakrishnan C V spewed into the ether:
>You are sadly mistaken Robin. 
>
>At the first place, PC came from IBM, they only hired Bill Gates to
>write an operating system for this PC.
They hired Bill Gates because the person(s?) who was originally
supposed to write the OS decided to play golf than meet the IBM
representatives :). Bill Gates licensed DOS to demonstrate to IBM, because he didn't have an OS available then.The rest is history.

>Secondly, IBM allowed to clone PC by any number of other companies
>that resulted in the proliferation, price fall, and ultimately >widespread usage.
That was not IBM's benevolence, by any means. Compaq reverse engineered the PC BIOS, and went on to win a court case against IBM, with the court ruling that reverse engineering was legal.
IBM published the BIOS specs only after that.

>Had there been no Microsoft, other DOS's (PC DOS, DR DOS, etc) would
>have taken the role of MS DOS. OS2 would have assumed the role of
>Windows.
True, but with IBM's dominance and their partnership with MS,the
others didn't stand a chance, particularly with Microsoft's tactics of not allowing windows to be installed on machines with other DOSs, even though they were fully compatible with MSDOS (Caldera's DRDOS is pretty famous in that regard).

>The prime reason for proliferation of PCs in the world is due to the
>benevolence of IBM in allowing cloning of PCs by other companies. If >not PC would have a market share as Macintosh and you can imagine the
>fate of Microsoft.
Secondly, when the courts ruled that Microsoft Windows was legal and not a unlicensed clone of the Mac GUI. And to think that the NASSCOM president Dewang Mehta wants software patents and quotes this case in favour of allowing patents. I wonder how many of the NASSCOM members
depend on Windows for their livelyhood? ;)

Devdas Bhagat.



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