On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:02:26 GMT
"Bob Ackley -> Ed Hulett"  wrote:

 BA> Replying to a message of Ed Hulett to Bob Ackley:

 EH>> Stac went out of business when drive sizes started hitting 1GB.

 BA> More to the point, when HD space became dirt cheap.  The same thing
 BA> happened to all the other folks that provided data crammers - except
 BA> M$.

M$ made more than just drive compression software. If Stac had
diversified they would still be around.

 BA>>> FWIW, MS-DOS included copyrighted code lifted right out of
 BA>>> Digital Research's CP/M-86.

 EH>> DRI didn't do a thing about it.

 BA>>> I don't know whether that code was legacy code from QDOS (the
 BA>>> product Gates bought from Seattle Computer Products, hacked on
 BA>>> a bit, renamed and packaged as DOS) or whether Gates copied
 BA>>> the code himself.

 EH>> It was legacy code from QDOS.

 BA> You state that like you are personally aware of the situation.  Since
 BA> you are much closer to the action than I am I will defer to you.

A friend of mine was part of the project to resurrect DRDOS and had the
original DRDOS and CP/M source code. The copyrighted code was the bit
with some of Kildall's early comments included which he had distributed
to others (Seattle Computer Products) and asked that the code stay
commented.

For a very short time, my friend had the only source code in the world
for CP/M86. Caldara had inadvertently destroyed their only copy of the
source. My friend told them that if they kept DRDOS open source he'd
let them have his copy. :-)

 BA>>> Unfortunately, Gary Kildall, who owned DRI and wrote the code
 BA>>> in question, did not push the issue at the time as it would
 BA>>> have annoyed IBM, which was M$'s patron at the time.  At the
 BA>>> time IBM didn't include an OS with its PCs, you could buy DOS
 BA>>> with your PC for an extra $30, or you could get CP/M-86 with
 BA>>> your PC for an extra $300.

 EH>> IBM went with M$ DOS when Kildall flew off for a golf game
 EH>> instead of meeting with IBM.

 BA> Note that the IBM reps showed up at the DRI door without setting up
 BA> the meeting in
 BA> advance.  It wasn't a case of Kildall just refusing to meet with them
 BA> or avoiding
 BA> them, he didn't know they were coming and went on vacation.  I'm sure
 BA> that had IBM contacted DRI in advance and set up the meeting that it
 BA> would have happened - and IMO the world would be a better place.

That doesn't sound like how IBM did business back then, but I won't
argue the point.

 EH>> If Kildall had met with IBM M$ may never have grown to what it
 EH>> is today.

 BA> That's true.  Kildall and DRI weren't on a mission to take over the
 BA> world, they were perfectly happy to provide the OS and let other
 BA> people write the applications.  Note that at the time, DRI's flagship
 BA> product CP/M was installed on a bigger percentage of microcomputers
 BA> than M$ has now or FTM has ever had.

At one time I had an old Kapro running CP/M. It was quite a computer...
with it's Zilog Z-80 cpu.

Ed

-- 
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that
he knows no more. -- William Cowper

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