Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 15:54:20 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Paul Robinson <paul@akita.co.uk> Cc: j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How did the MSFT monopoly start? Message-ID: <20010808155419.O78395@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20010806150653.C96762@jake.akitanet.co.uk>; from paul@akita.co.uk on Mon, Aug 06, 2001 at 03:06:53PM %2B0100 References: <20010806142544.A64348@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010806150653.C96762@jake.akitanet.co.uk>
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On Monday, 6 August 2001 at 15:06:53 +0100, Paul Robinson wrote: > On Aug 6, j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org> wrote: > >> We hear all of the stories of how OEMs had to install Windows if they sold >> MS-DOS, but how did MSFT get the clout to require this in the first place? >> How did they go from being just-another-DOS to having the power to tell OEMs >> what they could and could not do, and price-gouging them if they did not >> comply? > > They licensed DOS to IBM who produced the original PC. Note that they didn't write DOS. They bought it from Seattle Computer Products, who called it (officially) 86/DOS and unofficially QDOS (Quick and Dirty OS). I got version 1.0 with some hardware from SCP in November 1980. It was basically a CP/M clone because Digital Research had been dragging their feet and still hadn't released CP/M 86. > It was a default with the first IBM's, which at first were > un-cloneable until the BIOS got reverse engineered. No, they cloned them long before that, ripping off the IBM BIOS to do so. People got quite upset when, in about 1984, IBM pointed (quite politely) that this was in breach of copyright. > All a bit before my time, but I suspect by that time DOS had become > a standard, especially as plenty of business software would have > been available for it by that time, whereas CP/M and GeOS would have > been rather lacking. CP/M 86 was basically just too late. Also, it came from a competitor of Microsoft. Initially there wasn't much to choose from between the two systems. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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