On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 10:17:26 GMT
"Bob Ackley -> JOHN MASSEY"  wrote:

 BA> Replying to a message of BOB KLAHN to JOHN MASSEY:

 JM>>>>> So what?  He earned that money. He should be able to do
 JM>>>>> what ever he pleases with it.

 BK>>>>   Whether he earned that money is arguable. It is clear he
 BK>>>> broke laws to get it. Including stealing software, engaging in
 BK>>>>   conspiracy in restraint of trade, suborning perjury.

 JM>>> Your opinion not bassed in fact.

 BK>>  He lost the suit by Stacker. He lost the suit, or made a deal,
 BK>>  with Netscape. His people lied about Win 95 being inextricable
 BK>>  from Internet Explorer, in court.

 BA> Just in case you and anyone else are not aware of the particulars,
 BA> way back when disk drives cost a mint of money there were several
 BA> different methodologies of cramming more data into less space, all
 BA> are basically file system drivers.  One such - and probably the best
 BA> and most popular
 BA> - was a product called 'Stacker' by Stac Electronics.  M$ included
 BA> Stacker in its initial release of DOS v 4.0 without bothering to
 BA> license the product or otherwise getting permission from Stac
 BA> Electronics.  Stac sued M$ and won the lawsuit, M$ paid the
 BA> settlement to Stac, unbundled Stacker from DOS, bought another
 BA> company called DoubleSpace and bundled that product with DOS.  Ran
 BA> Stac out of business.

You have it a bit wrong. M$ and Stac had an agreement to include
Stacker with DOS *6* (not DOS 4.0), but M$ took the code they got from
Stacker and built their own software effectively taking Stac out of the
equation. When Stac won an out-of-court settlement, M$ went with
DoubleSpace.

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

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

DRI didn't do a thing about it.

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

It was legacy code from QDOS.

 BA> Unfortunately, Gary Kildall, who owned DRI and wrote the code in
 BA> question, did not push the issue at the time as it would have annoyed
 BA> IBM, which was M$'s patron at the time.  At the time IBM didn't
 BA> 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 your PC
 BA> for an extra $300.

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

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

Ed

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

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