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Microsoft Paternity Case Settled 130

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the dos'-baby-daddy dept.
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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Microsoft Paternity Case Settled More

Microsoft Paternity Case Settled

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  • Thrown Out (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Major Blud ( 789630 ) * on Monday July 30, 2007 @05:08PM (#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: (Score:1)

      by jmyers ( 208878 )
      I thought this was about the supposed easter egg in CP/M that was in QDOS. There have been various rumors about an easter egg that would have only been present in an exact ripoff of code rather than just copying features. In any case the article makes no mention of this so I guess is stays a rumor.

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

        by arivanov ( 12034 ) on Monday July 30, 2007 @05:21PM (#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.
        • "Those were the days when Microsoft was proud to be Unix-alike."

          yeah, except for the stupid backslashes, which are very un-Unix and un-C.

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

      by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) * <seebert42@gmail.com> on Monday July 30, 2007 @05:35PM (#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%.
          • Oh, they existed all right. I had one to develop on--with an Osborne. The processor was removed, a plug put in its socket, and the processor into that. A ribbon cable extended from the case, with (iirc) an edge connector.

            The catch was that CP/M (including the first couple of renditions of CP/M-86 had no notion of directories. It did, however, have 16 (?) numbered "users", which could mask the available files. ISTR that default was user 0 which could see everything, and that the other users were accesse
            • another solution to hard drives on 8 bits was done with a 5 meg corvus drive for the apple. It appeared to the apple dos as 35 floppy drives on the same controller . . . I believe the price tag was $5k . . .

              hawk

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by empaler ( 130732 )
          That is the explanation for one of my greatest annoyances in the DOS/Win UI?! FFS! AAAAARGH! MY HEAD ASPLODE!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by IvyKing ( 732111 )

        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.

        Ripped off the user interface - WTF are you talking about??
        Copying an oldfile to newfile in CP/M: A> PIP newfile oldfile (may be missing some characters)
        Copying an oldfile to newfile in 86-DOS: A: COPY oldfile newfile
        The 86-DOS command for deleting a file was ERASE
        86-DOS used BATch files, CP/M used SUBmit files

        The API for QDOS/86-DOS was by design a close copy of CP/M's API, specifically to allow for translation of CP/M code to 86-DOS code. The concept of File Control Blocks were brought in fo

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

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30, 2007 @06:08PM (#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: (Score:2)

        by qzulla ( 600807 )
        Probably Byte, gramps.

        I still have some. Circuit Cellar was great. Chaos Manor.

        Yeah, my beard is a bit off color nowadays too.

        qz

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hawk ( 1151 )
          I read those, but my beard is still dark.

          OK, I pick up some light hairs my wife leaves on the pillow, but . . . really, they're not mine . . .

          hawk

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by asylumx ( 881307 )
        Did you just say we can't change history until sometime in the future?

      • god what was the name of that magazine? I forget, lots of S100 h/w, can't recall..


        possibly Radio Electronics.

      • It seems to me that QDOS changed names - what I was running on my S100 system started out as QDOS and then changed names to SCP-DOS and was from Seattle Computer Products who were basically just across the street from Microsoft in Bellevue. The story I heard at the time from someone at SCP was that Microsoft hired the services of the SCP guy who did their DOS and the result was PC-DOS.

        Either way SCP-DOS was clearly CPM rewritten for the 8086 - as another poster mentioned even the file control blocks were

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by IvyKing ( 732111 )

          The real downfall of the S100 systems was the memory... I can still remember paying $1600 for a 16KB (iirc, might have been 64K) static memory board.


          I remember a price of $1200 for SCP's 64K static RAM boards in late 1981 - price had dropped to $1000 when I bought my SCP system in '82. Their original RAM was a 16K board.


          The speed of the SCP (processor and 8" floppy) was impressive compared to the original IBM PC.

      • Using the same logic you can say that Linux was just a rip off IRIX or other *IXes. The allegations in the book were ridiculous. Besides, at that time it was David of Microsoft against Goliath of IBM. Siding up with corporations, Slashdot?

  • Article bias (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Schnoogs ( 1087081 )
    I love the cheap jab at the end as if to suggest that his failings were anything but a complete lack of business sense.
    • Please explain the difference between being an altruistic human being and having a "complete lack of business sense". From my point of view, these are one and the same- as everybody I can name who has "business sense" are scumbucket sociopaths interested only in profit.

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

    by athloi ( 1075845 ) on Monday July 30, 2007 @05:19PM (#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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by ramdac ( 302865 )
      "if there's even dialup internet access."

      That's not exactly superior engineering is it?

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

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Monday July 30, 2007 @05:38PM (#20049065) Homepage Journal
      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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by spir0 ( 319821 )
          just interested in knowing how you do your rating. Are you referring to Linux the kernel, or the OS/distributions?

          If it's the latter, what is technically superior about Linux and the Linux environment? The package management? The broad range of binary distributed packages that are distro specific? The ease of package compilation? The consistency in the look and feel of GUI programs? The consistency of the GUIs (ie; window managers)? The consistency of the libraries? The consistency of applications' use of l
          • 'just interested in knowing how you do your rating. Are you referring to Linux the kernel, or the OS/distributions?'

            All of the above. Although the definition has been muddied in recent times the kernel IS the OS. However, you can't really have a fair comparison with the other popular operating systems because they are distributions. So yes, the discussion must include everything that is available for Linux as a platform and that everything is not limited to a single distribution. We can discuss features unt

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by salimma ( 115327 )

              I have worked with many distributions over the years and Ubuntu and I just clicked, I don't see a purpose for the others anymore.

              Err.. better font rendering? (Both Fedora/RHEL and openSUSE/SLED. Mandriva also, but have not seen much of it recently). The different distributions are experimenting with their user interface, which is good (Fedora with the GNOME Online Desktop, SUSE with SLAB (GNOME) and their custom KDE menu, Mandriva with their 3-D Matisse desktop). You don't want to replace Microsoft's monopo

              • 'Err.. better font rendering?'

                Maybe to someone's eyes. Linux fonts have looked great to me for a couple years now on any major distribution. They all use anti-aliased fonts. Fonts only matter to the extent that you don't notice them.

                'The different distributions are experimenting with their user interface, which is good (Fedora with the GNOME Online Desktop, SUSE with SLAB (GNOME) and their custom KDE menu, Mandriva with their 3-D Matisse desktop).'

                Yes, but they suck.

                'You don't want to replace Microsoft's mo

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bill, Shooter of Bul ( 629286 )
      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mrraven ( 129238 )
        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.
        • I was referring to the general case at hand technology is more than just software, it includes hardware where my statement makes more sense. Also, from what I've heard CPM was more expensive on IBM PC.
    • 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.

      Just out of curiosity, how many spreadsheets and word processors were available for the Amiga? How about, let's see back then, Word Perfect or Lotus 123?

      Yeah, it would be nice in a perfect world, where technical excellence equated to market penetration, but then again, who will be the judge of technical excellence?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jrumney ( 197329 )
        Wordperfect was the high end word-processor for the Amiga, and there were several cheaper options. Maxiplan Plus was comparable with 123 or Excel of the time, again with a couple of cheaper alternatives.

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

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Monday July 30, 2007 @06:03PM (#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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fm6 ( 162816 )
          I'm sorry, who are you ranting against here? Both Patterson and Gates were nobodies when this happened.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Wudbaer ( 48473 )
            Yes, but Gate's mother knew some high-up IBM execs (and you know how convincing Moms can be ;-)).

            • I saw a documentary on the biography channel about Bill Gates, and it was amazing how plugged in his mother was. From Mary Maxwell Gates [wikipedia.org]:

              She was the first female president of King Countys United Way, the first woman to chair the national United Ways executive committee where she served most notably with IBM's CEO, John Akers, and the first woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington's board of directors.

              The saying "It's not what you know, but who you know." seems to be quite appropriate in this case.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by rbanffy ( 584143 )
            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.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by fm6 ( 162816 )
              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.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by fm6 ( 162816 )
              So he started the company with his parents money. That didn't automatically make him a major player. Quite the opposite, in fact: the fact that Bill had avoided the usual venture capital gauntlet probably counted against him with potential customers.

              What we're discussing right now is whether BG3 had an unfair advantage over any other small company when he landed the famous IBM consulting contract. Starting the company with Dad's checkbook is not that big an advantage.
              • As shaitaind said, "money and connections":

                Mary Maxwell Gates (July 5, 1929-June 9, 1994) served 18 years (1975-1993) on the University of Washington board of regents. She was the first female president of King County's United Way, the first woman to chair the national United Way's executive committee where she served most notably with IBM's CEO, John Akers, and the first woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington's board of directors. Mary's son Bill Gates is the co-founder of Microsoft

                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates [wikipedia.org] Emphasis mine.

        • 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.

        • 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.

          Don't rewrite history. Microsoft in 1980 was a known quantity, dominant in programming languages for the eight-bit micro, and had the licensed XENIX OS ready for the sixteen-bit micro. Microsoft Timeline [thocp.net]

      • What's particularly irritating about QDOS/MS-DOS is that it's success was pure blind luck.

        IBM had a launch date set for the PC.

        The clock was running out for Kildall. He hadn't nailed down the deal or pushed his OS to completion.

        Gates was there waiting and Gates took a chance, promising to deliver something serviceable on a very tight schedule and at a very attractive price - without licensing it exclusively to IBM.

    • 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
      • 'if you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door'

        No, you license a mouse trap to a company whilst not actually owning one, then go out and buy one from a third company and get the first company to pay for it. Later on you license the same mouse trap to other companies as first company neglected to get an exclusive deal. Later on first company tries and fails to wriggle out through the invention of their own mOuSse2. YOU take the money and spend it on MouseNT trap instead. Fool m

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      > 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.

      In terms of specific products, product lines, and companies, that's true.

      However, it's not entirely true when it comes to ideas, capabilities, and interface design, because in the case of these things a lot (albeit not all) of the better ones get copied from product to product and from one company's product

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

    by Applekid ( 993327 ) on Monday July 30, 2007 @05:20PM (#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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      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!
      • Not to insult you, just make a minor correction; I think the word you were looking for there was abomination. Calling DOS an abortion doesn't quite fit.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fm6 ( 162816 )
          No offense taken — but you're wrong. An abortion is something that didn't (methaphorically) finish gestating. Since Patterson knew nothing about writing operating systems (it didn't, for example, occur to him to make his code reentrant [wikipedia.org]) I think "abortion" is pretty apt.
          • Still, by definition, an abomination is a detestable quality, act, or condition, which, in my opinion, is also an adequate description of Patterson's DOS, and the term abomination may also be easier to understand in this context. You make a very good point, however. I won't fault you for your logic.
  • The Shocking Results Are In!
  • 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.

        • Aristocrats -- you mean, like, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Stanford, Carnegie, Ford, Flagler, and all the other robber barons?

          Thanks for bringing this up. Let's see if you can spot the difference between the old robber barons, and the new crop of American Aristocrats:

          Or do you mean their modern equivalent -- the Bush family estate, Kennedies, the persons who control Haliburton?

          The difference is heredity. Strong estate taxes kept the first set from passing their money down, like the second set does. Th

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jschrod ( 172610 )
            You seem to assume that aristocracy is tied to money and is somehow dampered by strong estate taxes. I don't think so.

            For once, money was never a defining trait of aristocracy (as any Jane Austen book will tell, and she reports quite succinctly about the heredity problems of UK aristocrats, too), but influence, political power, and being the upper class in society.

            Second, from somebody with your nick name I would have expected that you know that the fall of the Vanderbilt empires (and others of that tim

            • For once, money was never a defining trait of aristocracy (as any Jane Austen book will tell, and she reports quite succinctly about the heredity problems of UK aristocrats, too), but influence, political power, and being the upper class in society.

              None of which can be maintained without adequate resources. If the next generation always has to start from scratch- with nothing- regardless of influence, political power, and class they will be facing an uphill climb. Nobody with influence wants to talk to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by robkill ( 259732 )
      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:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Listen to Metallica at all? Kirk Hammett, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich cane to this conclusion in 1988. At the time I thought the album was a bit of a sellout compared to Master Of Puppets or Kill 'em All, but in retrospect it still had the edge compared to the albums that followed.

      And Justice for All [sing365.com]

      God, I feel old when I realise I just waxed nostalgic about ...And Justice for All. Anyway. Metallica had it right. Justice is meaningless. One need only look as far as the illegality of marijuana and the fis

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Myopic ( 18616 )
      -1, Troll

      Come on, mods.
    • If this trial had taken place in at least some countries in Europe (and it *could* have taken place in most, if not all, of them), the plaintiff might well have won. For example, under UK law, truth is *not* an absolute defense against defamation. That's right: if you write something bad about someone, even though that bad thing is demonstrably true, you could still lose a libel suit. Now *that* is injustice.

      You might also want to take note that while Paterson *filed* a suit (and I fully agree with you that

  • 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 @05:40PM (#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?

  • I do not think it means what you think it means (Score:4, Funny)

    by monkeySauce ( 562927 ) on Monday July 30, 2007 @05:44PM (#20049159) Journal
    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.

    • Although since we are talking about DOS, perhaps deinfameation would have been more accurate.
      Or maybe just inflamation.

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

    by postbigbang ( 761081 ) on Monday July 30, 2007 @06:01PM (#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.

  • Tim Paterson already had his payday for QDOS (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And $50K ought to be enough for anybody.
  • 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.
  • I think there was some kid saying Gates was its father.
    free money

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

    by JJBrooks13 ( 1135265 ) on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @01:45AM (#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)

      by rs232 ( 849320 )
      "After five days, Disk BASIC was up and running on the Altair"

      Only after 'Gates obtained the source code [nlc-bnc.ca] for a version of Basic from DECUS, a DEC user's group'

      --

      Bill G on ACID [reelsplatter.com] &-)

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