On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 at 16:07, tom ehlert <[email protected]> wrote:
> you are talking about the MSDOS 1.0 API. Yes, I am. > that's the way other programs talk to the OS; copying it was and is > considered fair game. Is it? By whom? I mean, it definitely happens. There are multiple DOSes out there, including Datalight ROM-DOS: https://www.datalight.com/products/rom-dos/ ... and the Russian PTS-DOS: http://phystechsoft.ru/pts-dos CP/M itself has also been copied multiple times. I am aware of... • CPMish -- https://github.com/davidgiven/cpmish • Cromemco CDOS -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco_DOS • SAM Coupé ProDos -- https://sam.speccy.cz/cpm.html There were others. Most of these were quite niche and not particularly competitors to DR's OS. E.g. CDOS was contemporary but only ran on Cromemco kit, AFAIK. SAM ProDos (unrelated to Apple ProDos) was long after. CPMish is a modern product built by combining 2 very old replacements for _parts_ of CP/M. The thing about SCP QDOS is that it started out as something tiny and niche and no real threat to DR. SCP was a small company. But MS promised IBM an OS when MS didn't have one, so they bought QDOS, renamed it, and in the end it went directly up against CP/M-86 but at 1/6 of the price. That is why DR was aggrieved, and I think it's a legitimate reason. > nothing about 'lifting'. Taking another company's design and re-implementing it does not involve _stealing_ their code, but it is not completely "fair game" as you maintain, I think. > 'design' usually refers to the internal way this API is implemented, > and was in no way copied. The API itself was and has a design. _That_ is what was copied. Not the implementation. > > That is why it was DR was able to offer DR-DOS. > MSDOS 1.0 came out 1981. DRDOS 3.31 was published 1988. DR-DOS was not the first. E.g. DR's DOS Plus, as bundled with the BBC Micro 8086 co-processor, the BBC Master 512, and the early Amstrad PC1512 and PC1640, was 3 years earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Plus You might be familiar with the Amstrad machines via the Schneider brand, I think? > and I really doubt it contains many lines from the CP/M code or even > the same internal organisation as CP/M as it > would be of little use for directories, memory allocation (segments) and more. Nobody is alleging it does. > and was wildly successful doing this ;) Harsh. Not inaccurate, but harsh. Someone came along, copied their product and sold it much cheaper, and the company struggled. No surprise there. > if it's ok to say that linux lifted the design from unix you may > insist on saying this. I would say that, yes. This is a whole other discussion, but some important core facts: Novell donated the UNIX™ trademark to the Open Group in 1993. Since then, any product that passes Open Group certification can be called "Unix". It has not been anything connected with containing AT&T code for 38 years. Apple Mac OS X passed the certification and was this a Unix™. Several Linux distributions have passed, including Euler OS and K-OS, so yes, Linux is a Unix™ now. Neither contains any AT&T UNIX code and they don't need to. But yes, Linux is a 3rd party clean re-implementation of the UNIX API. _However_ that API was published, as was the source code of Unix in the first 6 or 7 versions. It was put out there so others could work with it, and that includes copying it. There are multiple other re-implementations of Unix. All of the BSD versions, QNX, Minix, MWC Coherent, any many more, all are reimplementations. DEC's OpenVMS has a POSIX-compatibility module, which is why DEC added "Open" to the name. So does IBM z/OS. So does Windows NT -- the latest version is called "Windows Services for Linux", WSL. This was public information, widely available. OpenVMS and z/OS were not really competitors. CP/M's API was not public info, although in those early days most companies did publish source code to enable software to be ported. MS-DOS was not originally one of many rivals; it was pretty much the *only* one on the PC platform. Nobody thought the PC would get so big. I don't blame Tim Paterson. I don't think he did anything wrong; it was fair enough. He did not plan to create a multi-billion-dollar industry. He didn't plan to make Bill Gates the richest man in the world. He didn't plan to crush DR, although I suspect MS did. But he did take someone else's design, yes. > I however don't think so. 'lifting' implies > some unproper behaviour That is why I used the word, yes. > BTW: your original statement was > > 'Remember that in effect MS-DOS was an unlicensed copy of Digital > Research's CP/M and particularly CP/M-86.' > > which was, is, and ever will be bullshit. Yes. I said that, I meant it, and I stand by it. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: [email protected] – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
