[KLUG Advocacy] Re: Advocacy digest, Vol 1 #11 - 1 msg

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Sun, 2002-05-05 at 13:22, Adam Williams wrote:
> Adopting other peoples good ideas is a bad thing?  If what they have
> done was illegal they would be under investigation for copyright/patent
> infringement.

Well, here's some bad ones ...

Bill Gates' original "anti-priacy" letter in 1975 was regarding their
Altair Basic which was nothing more than a direct port of Digital's
Basic from its PDP series, IP and all, 0 royalties paid.  In the early
'90s, following Apple's introduction of the Newton, Microsoft was able
to bury Pen Computing before they could sue them over directly stealing
source code.  This source code is at the base of today's Windows CE /
Pocket PC.  That's not just IP theft, but code plagerism!  Micrografx
also had its source code for its OS/2 port kit blatantly stolen by
visiting Microsoft engineers who were considering licensing it.  It
showed up in NT shortly thereafter and Micrografx's lawsuit went no
where (long story).  The same occurred years later with the inventor of
the ergonomic mouse who has in negotiation with Microsoft over licensing
that broke down -- the MS Intellimouse is a _verbatim_copy_, mechanical
factor-wise, 0 royalties paid (although that case is still on-going). 
Spyglass did have a licensing agreement with Microsoft for IE< but
Microsoft gave MS IE away, so they claimed they didn't need to pay
Spyglass one dime.  Microsoft smartly purchased Spyglass once an
injunction on IE was about to be handed down.

Now onto OEM stupidity ...

Seattle Computer Products DOS, a direct rip of CP/M source code (again,
directly code plagerism), became MS-DOS 1.0.  IBM would later settle
out-of-court for Microsoft for $800K.  Windows 1.0 was a direct source
rip of MacOS 1.0, which Microsoft swindled Apple out of with its
application licensing agreement.  IBM was stupid enough to think it
really needed to sign the Windows 95 licensing agreement and kiss their
IP rights goodbye -- largely all the code stealing from OS/2 in
late-1991 to mid-1995, _after_ their 10-year 1981-1991 license with MS
expired.  OEMs have done the same throughout the '90s, and now that the
"finding of facts" is over in the DOJ case, Microsoft has realized that
_no_new_evidence_ can be introduced in the trial, so it's forcing
_all_OEMs_ to sign over _all_IP_rights_.

> And many people are suddenly objecting to what they are told the
> latest-n-greatest is.  I know lots of M$ jockeys who look at XP and
> Office XP and say: What the *^$&*^*(@?

Windows XP is Win/NT _cracked_ to be Win/DOS compatible.  It destroys
the security of the platform, and still doesn't address the problem with
the design of Windows applications that believe they have full access to
the entire system at anytime, as any user.

> Newer M$ licensing actually lets one get around this.  We buy licenses
> for Office that apply to any version of office, from 97 to XP.  Upgrade
> or not,  M$ doesn't care, the check cleared.

That depends.  Some of those only apply to certain agreements.  E.g.,
you canNOT re-install Windows from a non-OEM copy using the OEM license
_unless_ you are an Enterprise or Government customer.

> A very much overlooked avenue.

I have to fight my local LUG on this all the time.  One LUG leader
finally agreed with me and introduced a "PC_Support" list without the
approval of the rest of the org.

> Amen!  If they had continued down the 3.5 path and been reasonably
> priced, Linux would be in much tougher straits today.

Totally agree!  Windows NT 3.50 and earlier were _good_ systems.  Not
perfect, and Microsoft's "marketing decisions" were bad -- e.g., poor
POSIX layer, drive letter proliferation, GUI required, etc... -- but it
became a walking _cluterfuck_ when Windows 95 came out and "Daytona" aka
NT 3.51, was put in front of "Cairo," which _never_ saw the light of day
(nor did most of its components either).

> I've heard some pretty good things about it from respectable sources, 
> never looked into it personally.

I did too.  Then I read another article on how C# does *NOT* give you
"language independence."  In a nutshell, you canNOT inherit from classes
in the CLR.  So, basically, the "backbone" of OOP design is "broken" in
the "unified" C#/CLR.

As such, I think thinks like the GCC/GCJ approach is _far_more_
"unified"!

-- Bryan

-- 
The US government could be 100x more effective, and 1/100th the
Constitutional worry, if it dictated its policy to Microsoft as
THE MAJOR CUSTOMER it is, and not THE REGULATOR it fails to be.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan J. Smith, SmithConcepts, Inc.   mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
Engineers and IT Professionals     http://www.SmithConcepts.com