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Microsoft Paternity Case Settled

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jul 30, 2007 04:04 PM
from the dos'-baby-daddy dept.
Operating Systems Software Government The Courts News
Many readers have written to tell us that last week, a Judge dismissed the defamation law suit brought by Tim Paterson, who sold a computer operating system to Microsoft in 1980, against journalist and author Sir Harold Evans and his publisher Little Brown. The software became the basis of Microsoft's MS-DOS monopoly, and the basis of its dominance of the PC industry."
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  • Thrown Out (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Major Blud (789630) * on Monday July 30 2007, @04:08PM (#20048563) Homepage
    This case really needed to be dismissed. Anyone who has ever used DOS and CP/M can notice obvious similarities. Still I think it was wrong from Evans to say that Paterson ripped off CP/M. Even CPM/M contains features that you could claim are rip-offs of other operating systems (file systems, command-lines, etc.)

    • Re:Thrown Out (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Marxist Hacker 42 (638312) * <seebert@aracnet.com> on Monday July 30 2007, @04:35PM (#20049017) Homepage Journal
      My original JE on the topic:

      Apparently, despite Tim Patterson's denial, QDOS "ripped off" CP/M, specifically in the user interface, which in 1980 was the defining characteristic of software copyright law. QDOS of course was sold by Patterson to Bill Gates, who used it as the basis of PC Dos 1.0 and MS DOS, which was the creation of the monopoly that eventually became Windows.

      This is ALL about look and feel, which was 100% of the definition of software copyright in 1980.
      • Yes but this "rip off" of CP/M as you call it exchanged the A and the C drive letters -- so it was completely different.
        • I didn't know CP/M had hard drive support at all in the version that got ripped off- a 5MB Winchester drive in those days was in the low $1500 range. But the standard was 33% in the old days. You had to change 33% of the user interface. Certainly ripping of most of the interrrupt code was NOT changing the interface 33%.
        • Not so sure of that- they ended up changing copyright law to get rid of those lawsuits, and today you need to prove direct copying of source code.
          • Or patent the idea of having disk drives designated by letters...

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by misleb (129952)
            What they lost in copyright, they regained with frivolous and overreaching patents.

            Personally, I think the whole idea of "intellectual property" is absurd from the start. Owning an idea? Ridiculous. It is my humble prediction that so called "intellectual property" will one day be the downfall of capitalism as we know it. Or rather, it will make capitalism obsolete.

            -matthew

    • Re:Thrown Out (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2007, @05:08PM (#20049473)
      At the time (yes I was there, the beard is going white these days) QDOS was obviously just CP/M for the 8086. I recall little ads in the back of...god what was the name of that magazine? I forget, lots of S100 h/w, can't recall...more technical than Byte, which was good back then. And no it wasn't Dr. Dobbs. The 8086 came out and all these S100 cards got made and people needed something to run on them.

      Nastier are the rumors that much of QDOS was really ripped off. Don't know the truth to that but Intel did provide an 8080/8085 to 8086 assembler translator which was used by many developers to quickly get IBM PC versions of their programs to market. It did a lot of the work but you were stuck with compact or small memory model, never used it since all my stuff was Z80 (3D graphics in assembler, fun!). CP/M source was available. Put one and one together? I heard something about Kildall asking why a '$' was used to terminate the string passed to the console output call and that only he knew the real answer (could be a hack to reduce code size which was the common technique those days - no caches so jumping around to share subroutine exits was considered good form and could substantially reduce code size, MS BASIC was full of that sort of thing, that Paul Allen wrote some good code, pity he got sick when he did, it could've been quite a different world).

      Anyway we can't change history, yet, so its not worth worrying too much about it. Its not like CP/M was any great OS we should lament. {MS,PC}-DOS v1 did add some useful things that you either had to hack into CP/M yourself or get an add-on (another thing who's name I forget ... that Z80-only add on that vastly improved CP/M).

      • Re:Thrown Out (Score:5, Informative)

        by arivanov (12034) on Monday July 30 2007, @04:21PM (#20048809) Homepage
        The FCBs as a file access method were a sufficient easter egg in themselves. No need to add any extra easter eggs methinks. Compared to that the Unix ripoff of using integer filehandles in the later dos versions was a godsend. By the way the thing about the unix likeliness was proudly stated by Microsoft in the old MSDOS programmer manual. Yep. Those were the days when Microsoft was proud to be Unix-alike.

  • Markets, not quality, decide predominance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by athloi (1075845) on Monday July 30 2007, @04:19PM (#20048767) Homepage Journal
    It's a sad but iron fact of life that market viability and not the quality of the end product defines what lives and what ends up with the Amiga and other good ideas in the storeroom of history. This doesn't mean I like it. In fact, I'd like to live in a society where superior engineering was accepted over superior marketing. Any ideas? Will move, if there's even dialup internet access.
    • "if there's even dialup internet access."

      That's not exactly superior engineering is it?
    • Sorry but not going to happen. It probably wouldn't be all that much better. What sells in the long run is what works. Windows for all it's warts does work for most people. Mac OS/X is selling because it works better for some people and Linux is gaining ground because it works for others.
      If technical excellence was the only benchmark then Linux would also be in trouble. It is good but even Linux which I do like and use has it's warts. The difference is people are are free to fix the worst of them.
      • 'If technical excellence was the only benchmark then Linux would also be in trouble. It is good but even Linux which I do like and use has it's warts.'

        Everything has its warts. On the technical excellence scale I'd certainly rate Linux before Mac OSX and Windows though.
    • Well, economics have something to do with marketing every now and then. We need to figure out the best technology at the best price. That sometimes results in inferior but cheaper technology taking root. I, for one, am glad that people other than the four richest kings of Europe own computers.
      • Bzzzt Linux and other free software is cheaper as in free. Early lock-in and relentless marketing sadly trumps superior cost efficiency, or technical excellence every time and now poor consumers are stuck with Vista that is over priced, bloated, lacks drivers (even fewer drivers than say Ubuntu) and refuses to run software designed for Windows solely because it's all people know about due to lock-in and M$s relentless multi billion dollar marketing.

    • Re:Markets, not quality, decide predominance (Score:5, Informative)

      by fm6 (162816) on Monday July 30 2007, @05:03PM (#20049411) Homepage Journal
      Well, quality of the end product is not irrelevant to market viability. But basically, you're correct. What's particularly irritating about QDOS/MS-DOS is that it's success was pure blind luck. Bill Gates himself wanted to use CP/M — he may not be the genius he's marketed as, but he knew a de-facto standard when he saw one. QDOS, by contrast, barely deserved to be called an OS.

      TFA gets many facts wrong. One is the reason CP/M didn't get the favored OS status from IBM: Kildall thought the standard IBM NDA was to restrictive, so they couldn't even ask him for the product. It's true that IBM did offer CP/M (and also the p-System [wikipedia.org] as alternatives, but their official choice was "PC DOS", and that's what made Patterson's insane kludge the de facto standard.

      As they say, it's better to be lucky than to be smart.
      • 'As they say, it's better to be lucky than to be smart.'

        And its better to be rich with connections than either. Most small companies that have no track record and haven't produced anything couldn't even get a meeting to pitch their product to IBM in the first place.
        • I'm sorry, who are you ranting against here? Both Patterson and Gates were nobodies when this happened.
          • Yes, but Gate's mother knew some high-up IBM execs (and you know how convincing Moms can be ;-)).
          • While Paterson may have been a nobody when IBM first approached DR for an OS for the PC, Microsoft was already at work on the BASIC interpreter that shipped in ROM on the original IBM PCs. At that time, Bill Gates was hardly a nobody - their BASIC was in just about every personal computer you could buy - even the Apple II+. They got the OS job handed over because DR wouldn't sign the NDA. It was fortunate for them they knew about Paterson.
            • OK, "Nobody" is a bit extreme. My point was simply that he wasn't a big player that IBM felt obliged to listen to.
          • William Gates III was always wealthy and well connected. His startup was funded with family money, not venture capital or loans. Although it is safe to say that both the money and the connections belonged to his parents at that point.

        • Most small companies that have no track record and haven't produced anything couldn't even get a meeting to pitch their product to IBM in the first place

          I hope you're not talking about Microsoft here. They had produced a very popular version of BASIC before IBM approached them. IBM originally talked to them to license Microsoft BASIC, since a BASIC interpreter was seen as something any microcomputer needed. When they couldn't get the OS they wanted, they got Microsoft to provide one as well.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by OldSoldier (168889)
      Grow up! The sooner you realize the old adage "if you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door" isn't true, the happier you'll be. I loved the Amiga, but a few years after waiting for the rest of the world to realize how wonderful that machine was I got the distinct impression that the powers-that-be at Amiga/Commodore were just waiting for the world to beat a path to their door.

      For any significant real-world problem there are at least 2 things that need to be solved. Call it "the

  • Credit where none should be assigned. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Applekid (993327) on Monday July 30 2007, @04:20PM (#20048775)
    So, wait, someone actually wants to claim credit for being the man behind MS-DOS?

    In other news, No One Admits To Singing, Writing, Producing Nation's No. 1 Song [theonion.com].
    • Hey - it looks good on a resume... but it won't exactly get you bonus points at a LUG meeting.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hardburn (141468)

      Yup. No driver real model, passes everything important off to the BIOS (and ignores everything important that it can't), can't multitask on its own, a memory limitation that seems very obvious in retrospect, no sensible pipes, and a file system that's constantly losing track of its own mind. But apparently, someone wants credit for it.

    • Well, yeah. If Patterson was stupid enough to create such an abortion, why shouldn't he be stupid enough to claim credit for it? But where he gets really creative with his stupidity is trying to sue somebody for saying it's a bad piece of software!
  • Anybody starting a trial because something gave him "great pain and mental anguish" needs to be beaten. Hardly.

    Meh. Why is America so ridiculously obsessed with trials, laws, and all that crap they love such as patents or imaginary property, to the point of turning so-called justice into an industry of fat, vicious thugs who make up anything to sue for a living, exploit ludicrous legal loopholes, or live on patents? They have degraded and degenerated the concept of "justice" to the point I can no longer spe
    • Why is America so ridiculously obsessed with trials, laws, and all that crap they love such as patents or imaginary property, to the point of turning so-called justice into an industry of fat, vicious thugs who make up anything to sue for a living, exploit ludicrous legal loopholes, or live on patents?

      Because it was better than the previous option, where instead of rule of law we had rule of the retarded hemophiliacs that Europe choose to call "Aristocrats".

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jschrod (172610)
        Aristocrats -- you mean, like, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Stanford, Carnegie, Ford, Flagler, and all the other robber barons? Or do you mean their modern equivalent -- the Bush family estate, Kennedies, the persons who control Haliburton?

        They might not have "von" or "de" or other aristocratic parts in their name, but they are aristocrats for all that matters. Remember the duck test: When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.

        • Supposedly, anybody with the brains and eventually the proper search engine, can become a lawyer (anybody else notice that 99% of what makes a good lawyer a good lawyer, knowing and applying precedents, could be done by an expert system running on a laptop?). As opposed to a hereditary aristocracy, where only those "worthy" of being nobility can.
        • The American Experiment was an abject failure. The reason is obvious- they choose a system that offered the freedom to do good, but ALSO the freedom to do evil. Thus Americans abused the system to do evil, which has an immediate reward, ignoring the freedom to do good, which requires a longer term point of view.
    • Anybody starting a trial because something gave him "great pain and mental anguish" needs to be beaten. Hardly.

      But if the person is hardly beaten, then it's hardly any punishment then is it? Now, severely beaten, on the other hand...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Myopic (18616)
      -1, Troll

      Come on, mods.

  • Settlement details (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Tim Paterson will have to pay to put Windows through college.

  • Drama (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dgun (1056422) on Monday July 30 2007, @04:40PM (#20049097) Homepage

    But then Kildall was motivated by technical excellence, not by the need to dominate his fellow man

    I'm a fan of Gary Kildall's, but was the last part of that statement even necessary?

    Why interject commentary in an otherwise fairly objective and good article?

  • Sounds like he was suing because they took away his fame.

    But that would defameation, not defamation.

    Although since we are talking about DOS, perhaps deinfameation would have been more accurate.

  • Patterson and others borrowed from CP/M bigtime (Score:5, Interesting)

    by postbigbang (761081) on Monday July 30 2007, @05:01PM (#20049387)
    Seattle DOS was only one.... the source code to MP/M and CP/M floated around freely. CP/M itself is a re-do of RT-11, a horrible DEC OS.

    After the success of MS/IBM DOS, he started selling his own version again. It was less weird (compatibility wise) than versions of MS-DOS, but never really took off. DRDOS survives to this day in one form and another.

    Then Microsoft tried to make DOS realistic with subdirectories, and other 'inventions' borrowed from other places. The whole operating system industry was/is highly incestuous.
  • Many of the command names are same as UNIX (fther of Linux), which had been around since the early 70s. Since UNIX command names are gnerally obscure, it was a clear case of "borrowing". No one cares.

  • MS-DOS Encylopedia -1986 (Score:3, Informative)

    by JJBrooks13 (1135265) on Tuesday July 31 2007, @12:45AM (#20053517)
    In this 1,054 page encylopedia with forward by Bill Gates and printed by Microsoft it states in the first chapter titled "The Story Begins": "That's when Gates, who was still a student at Harvard, flew to Albuquerque, checked into the Hilton Hotel with a stack of yellow legal pads, and asked not to be disturbed. Five days later, he checked out of the hotel, yellow pads filled, and started typing code into a DEC PDP-11 mainframe, ... After five days, Disk BASIC was up and running on the Altair. ... The file-handling routines in stand-alone Disk BASIC became, in turn, the model for the operationg system that would eventually be known as MS-DOS." If I recall correctly, Bill had to retract this at one point and correctly credit someone else. Gee, I wonder how much my encyclopedia is worth these days....(if I could only get bill to sign my copy...) Jj

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      >... "I am your father"

      "DO NOT WANT!"
      - Tux

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jmyers (208878)
      In this case Darth Bill killed off all the younglings and there is no son to challenge the father.
      • Wow! That was good. +1 insightful+funny for you ;-)

        It could even be considered true that the software industry imposed a hardware standard (and, later, an OS one) and thus killed the hardware industry.

        I really wish my notebook had an Alpha or MIPS processor...
    • "Search your filelings, you know it to be true!"

      • Re:Article bias (Score:5, Funny)

        by Teun (17872) on Monday July 30 2007, @04:57PM (#20049347) Homepage

        "The Register" is on par with Slashdot, quality-wise: completely unprofessional, and hype-driven.

        And judging by your regular postings you feel quite at home here ;)

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by cfoushee (803584)
        Its a good thing I my filter set to read all comments otherwise I wouldn't even see your guys funny and insightful comments regarding the bias of the article that will no doubt remain at a score less than 2. Remember folks that something can be bias even its "true". What most of us want from journalistic publications are the facts. Leave the pop shots to forms were people can debate their opinions.

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