[cebadams]

So is MS Windows an example of:

a. evolution,
b. natural selection, or
c. speciation.

[Dominic Harr]

Yes, actually, I would say so.

As an analogy, yes.

Windows has 'evolved', and been 'selected' by the environment. The 'speciation' is the Windows versions -- Win1.0/2.0/3.1/NT/95/98/2k/XP (and whichever ones I left out).

That's a good example of evolution in a system, in fact.

And the 'micro' changes (the millions of code changes during development of each 'version') eventually add up to 'macro' changes (new versions of Windows).

[discostu]

Speciation. First you have CPM then you get IBM-DOS then you get MS-DOS then you get the original Windows which is really just a shell extension to DOS and finally it moves out to being it's own breed of OS, though it still carries the CPM core in there (you can still run .com files, those are the legacy of CPM), that carrying of the baggage keeps it a subspecies rather than letting it become it's own race. Supposedly Longhorn will drop all downward compatibility and thus be it's own race. But given that XP still runs DOS stuff (and well, better than 98 did in my experience) I'm betting that Longhorn will be another species but will still be able to do DOS and Windows stuff.