LOL
Posted on 05/13/2007 4:05:27 PM PDT by Zakeet
Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant.
A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers.
But now there's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft. The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google (Charts, Fortune 500), Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
No, the other way around. IBM was desperate for an OS for their new PC computers. Gates had one with MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System). I think he wrote it himself, but I"m not sure. Gates held out for a royalty deal. IBM had no choice but to cave in.
The rest is history. PCs took off and Microsoft got a royalty payment on every copy of MS-DOS packaged with them.
On the one hand I admire Gates who not only was a very good programmer but proved to be multi-dimensional as he oversaw probably the most rapid growth of a mega-corporation ever. On the other, I believe MS often used predatory and illegal methods to crush their competition.
And Microsoft is acting like a racketeer.
No, because they have to prove that the patent is "non-obvious", and you also have to deal with "prior art", meaning the "invention" has not already been invented.
Gates knew IBM was looking for an OS, so he bought the forerunner to MSDOS from a company called Seattle Computer Products. Their product was a CP/M clone for the 8086 CPU. Gates bought it from SCP for I think $75,000. Eventually Microsoft paid them $1 million to settle a lawsuit.
I just had a wild idea.
Start patenting or copywrighting lottery numbers. When they come up winners, you get some of the loot.
Bill Gates made a statement about ten years ago about the possibility that someone else could develop a product that could beat Microsoft’s OS, and that was simply a market reality, so Microsoft would have to keep continuing to improve their product (the latter in reality is becoming very debatable).
Now someone else develops a better product, and one company doesn’t like it and sues. Wahh!
Microsoft’s day is coming to an end if it adopts this practice. If this course of action (sue the competitor if the competitor develops something better) is truly the direction of Microsoft, then it is time for Microsoft to die. Disclaimer - this is not a terroristic threat against Microsoft. The marketplace will eventually take care of Microsoft’s demise.
Are you sure? I thought IBM was talking to Gary Kildall at the same time they were talking to Gates. Supposedly, they showed up at his house, Kildall was out, his wife wouldn’t sign an NDA, so Gates ended up getting first crack, and the rest is history.
Yes, and Apple is starting to eat into Microsoft from the home side, while Linux tears them a new one from the corporate side. Couldn't happen to a finer bunch of fellows.
Windows has always been a piece of used food. I am so happy to see everyone finally realizing that the emperor has no clothes.
-ccm
Should have got her a Mac.
-ccm
Hmmmm.....I wonder if she can return it.....she’s in Montana....I’m not.....but, tell me....can a mac user use the same excel, word, publisher files, i.e. are they transferable yet?
I recognize much of the technology snitched from HDOS and UNIX as I've had full source code to both since 1980.
When you can't compete in the marketplace, you send in the lawyers to sow FUD.
That’s why we have BSD, lol.
Plus, if MS sues, they’ll have to highlight just which parts of the Linux kernel violate their patents. Any code that might offends can be repaired in six months.
That would be wrong. :p
It isn’t uncommon for server farms to have individual blade servers with 32 GB per individual system.
LOL
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Microsoft is entitled to some exclusive rights for their true inventions. If their rights are insufficient - or excessive - we fail to promote science and useful arts.
But Microsoft is also a convicted monopolist, so it is reasonable to expect them to license their intellectual property on a fair basis.
For a technology like the SMB/CIFS protocols - which doesn't really represent much of an innovation - the Linux consortium ought to be able to obtain a perpetual, non-exclusive license for a six-figure fee. Most of Microsoft's other protocols should be available for less than that.
Huh?
Ummm, nope. Microsoft adopted backslash for the directory separator because the UNIX forward slash directory separator was already in use as a switch character in CP/M (and every DEC OS: RT-11, RSX-11, VMS) and to retain command-line compatibility with CP/M it was necessary to retain the forward slash for switches -- for the user, anyway (the OS itself wouldn't care, of course).
The obvious and correct choice for switch character would be the dash (hyphen) used in UNIX, right? And the UNIX forward slash for directory separator, right? Well, guess what...
1. The ONLY place where the backslash is required for directories -- to this day in Windows -- is in the user interface. All places in the BIOS and operating system calls (e.g. INT 21), either forward slash or backslash are valid as directory separator.
2. In versions of DOS prior to 5.0, you could set an environment variable called "SWITCHAR" which would be interpreted as the switch character. That is, if you
set SWITCHAR=-you could use UNIX '-' for the switch character on all COMMAND.COM commands. DOS function 3700 allowed a program to query the SWITCHAR to interpret the passed commandline.
Unfortunately, SWITCHAR didn't gain wide acceptance except among (us) UNIX programmers who were forced to deal with MS-DOS, and it was eventually dropped. But it was there.
Anyway, the backslash wasn't chosen "to pretend it was different", it was because they HAD to be different, if they were to retain CP/M compatibility on the command-line.
And with regard to "bastardized" -- you are exactly right!
Happy Decoder Fun Ball Turnon.
What you say!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.