Information on the DOS situation.
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Kenn Yuill wrote:
> Well, other companies with vested interests and governments should
> fight this ruling, as ISTR that Digital Research used the FAT system in
> their later versions of DR-DOS. If this usage was allowed by Microsoft
> without protest, it should invalidate their claim IMHO, but I am not a
> patent attorney.
> Also, my experience with the PTO in the 1980's was quite mixed in
> their failure to recognise 'prior knowledge in the art'. In my case, it
> involved pyrotechnic formulations.
Hi all,
Disclaimer: I am not an attorney of any sort; I'm a computer tech that
has had some sort of computer for about 27 years.
Correct me if I'm wrong but but the 8" flexible disk drive (FDD) was
invented at IBM by Alan Shugart in 1967; in 1976, the 5 1/4" FDD was
developed by the same Alan Shugart for Wang Laboratories because they
wanted a smaller floppy drive to use with their desktop computers. If
I'm reading my history correctly I understand that by the mid-70's FDDs
used some file system very similar to the FAT system. Also, it is my
understanding that CP/M used a type of FAT file system by 1975 or 1976.
It seems this was part of the "prior art" argument for this case.
As far as whether M$ "thought up" the FAT file system in 1976 - well
that is plainly a lie. In fact M$ BOUGHT MS-DOS (called QDOS) in 1980
(and never did pay the full amount owed to Seattle Computer Products)
then re-released that as PC-DOS 1.0 with the launch of the first IBM PC
(see the MS-DOS history below). So this whole case is based on total BS.
This is just further proof that with enough money one can buy anyone in
the USA government.
And Tom, about your questions:
AFAIK JFS was fully developed by IBM for use in both AIX (IBM's UNIX)
and Warp Server for e-Business (WSeB) and then adapted for use in Warp
4.5 and Linux. It is NOT based on FAT So that is safe from M$ (although
that is part of the basis of the SCO-vs-IBM case).
HPFS was jointly developed by IBM (about 20%) and M$ (about 80%). NTFS
is HPFS with a few minor changes, hence NTFS reporting HPFS partitions
as "corrupted NTFS". There are many cross-licensing fees between IBM &
M$ in OS/2 and I don't know the details of the HPFS fees. As far as an
open-source HPFS that is a question for a patent attorney and I am not one.
It is my opinion that this case is NOT settled yet and that it will go
on for a long time. The patent was filed "retroactively" which is stupid
from the start. Plus there is just overwhelming evidence of prior art
and that any FAT patent is obvious due to the prior art. If, because of
making the proper payments to the proper people it is never overturned
then I say to just flick-off M$ and move to JFS on ALL storage even if
we have to develop a 12-bit JFS.
--------
From "DOS History" <http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/dos.htm#>
(watch for _javascript_ pop-up ads):
1973
Gary Kildall writes a simple operating system in his PL/M language. He
calls it CP/M (Control Program/Monitor). (Control Program for Microcomputer)
1979
February
Apple Computer releases DOS 3.2.
July
Apple Computer releases DOS 3.2.1
1980
April
Tim Patterson begins writing an operating system for use with Seattle
Computer Products' 8086-based computer. Seattle Computer Products
decides to make their own disk operating system (DOS), due to delays by
Digital Research in releasing a CP/M-86 operating system.
August
QDOS 0.10 (Quick and Dirty Operating System) is shipped by Seattle
Computer Products. Even though it had been created in only two
man-months, the DOS worked surprisingly well. A week later, the EDLIN
line editor was created. EDLIN was supposed to last only six months,
before being replaced.
September
Tim Patterson shows Microsoft his 86-DOS, written for the 8086 chip.
October
Microsoft's Paul Allen contacts Seattle Computer Products' Tim
Patterson, asking for the rights to sell SCP's DOS to an unnamed client
(IBM). Microsoft pays less than US$100,000 for the right.
December
Seattle Computer Products renames QDOS to 86-DOS, releasing it as
version 0.3. Microsoft then bought non-exclusive rights to market 86-DOS.
1981
February
MS-DOS runs for the first time on IBM's prototype microcomputer.
July
Microsoft buys all rights to DOS from Seattle Computer Products, and the
name MS-DOS is adopted.
August
IBM announces the IBM 5150 PC Personal Computer, featuring a 4.77-MHz
Intel 8088 CPU, 64KB RAM, 40KB ROM, one 5.25-inch floppy drive, and
PC-DOS 1.0 (Microsoft's MS-DOS), for US$3000.
--------
And from "MS-DOS History"
<http://www.nukesoft.co.uk/msdos/dosversions.shtml>
The history of MS-DOS is surprisingly long. It started off as QDOS
(Quick and Dirty Operating System) which was developed by Seattle
Computer Products to run on IBM's new PC. This list is fairly
comprehensive although a number of the more obscure versions of DOS have
been omitted.
Version Date Comments
1.0 1981 The original version of MS-DOS. This was a renamed version of
QDOS which had been purchased by an upstart company called Microsoft.
1.25 1982 This added support for double-sided disks. Previously the
disk had to be turned over to use the other side
2.0 1983 This added support for IBM's 10 MB hard disk, directories and
double-density 5.25" floppy disks with capacities of 360 KB
2.11 1983 Support for foreign and extended characters was added.
3.0 1984 Support for high-density (1.2 MB) floppy disks and 32 MB hard
disks was added.
3.1 1984 Network support was added.
3.3 1987 This release was written to take advantage of IBM's PS/2
computer range. It added support for high density 3.5" floppy disks,
more than one partition on hard disks (allowing use of disks bigger than
32 MB) and code pages.
4.0 1988 This version provided XMS support, support for partitions on
hard disks up to 2 GB and a graphical shell. It also contained a large
number of bugs and many programs refused to run on it.
4.01 1989 The bugs in version 4.0 were fixed.
5.0 1991 This was a major upgrade. It allowed parts of DOS to load
itself in the high memory area and certain device drivers and TSRs to
run in the unused parts of the upper memory area between 640K and 1024K.
This version also added support for IBM's new 2.88 MB floppy disks. An
improved BASIC interpreter and text editor were included, as was a disk
cache, an undelete utility and a hard-disk partition-table backup
program. After the problems with MS-DOS 4, it also provided a utility to
make programs think they were running on a different version of MS-DOS.
5.0a 1992/3 This was a minor bug fix which dealt with possibly
catastrophic problems with UNDELETE and CHKDSK.
6.0 1993 This was a catch-up with Novell's DR-DOS 6. It added a
disk-compression utility called DoubleSpace, a basic anti-virus program
and a disk defragmenter. It also finally included a MOVE command, an
improved backup program, MSBACKUP and multiple boot configurations.
Memory management was also improved by the addition of MEMMAKER. A
number of older utilities, such as JOIN and RECOVER were removed. The
DOS Shell was released separately as Microsoft felt that there were too
many disks.
6.2 1993 Extra security was built into DoubleSpace following
complaints of data loss. A new disk checker, SCANDISK, was also
introduced, as well as improvements to DISKCOPY and SmartDrive.
6.21 1993 Following legal action by Stac Electronics, Microsoft
released this version which had DoubleSpace removed. It came with a
voucher for an alternative disk compression program.
6.22 1994 Microsoft licensed a disk-compression package called
DoubleDisk from VertiSoft Systems and renamed it DriveSpace, which was
included in this version.
7.0 1995 This version is part of the original version of Windows 95.
It provides support for long filenames when Windows is running, but
removes a large number of utilities, some of which are on the Windows 95
CD in the \other\oldmsdos directory.
7.1 1997 This version is part of OEM Service Release 2 and later of
Windows 95. The main change is support for FAT 32 hard disks, a more
efficient and robust way of storing data on large drives.
--------
WarpDavey
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