🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5cot78$2...@www.gatecom.com>, ta...@gatecom.com (Michael Zander)
wrote:

> Microsoft didn't buy all their products from other companies.  They may
> have
> stolen/borrowed the concepts, but they didn't just walk over and "buy" 
> something.  Get your facts straight.

Except, perhaps, for the one product that enabled them to begin their
stranglehold of the personal computer market - DOS.  IIRC, when providing
the DOS for the original IBM PC's, they *bought* a product called
QDOS ("Quick and Dirty Operating System"), fiddled with it a bit, and
imposed on the world an operating system that has done more to hold
back development in personal computing than any other factor.

Mind you, the fact that the licence agreement they had with IBM was
non-exclusive (i.e. they could sell the system to clone manufacturers
as well) didn't help much either.

With IBM's clout in selling IBM PCs into companies through their grip
on the mainframe market, and Bill Gate's ownership of the operating
system used, the development of alternative platforms had little chance.

Which is a shame, to put it mildly, because there are some much nicer
and friendlier operating systems around, and, frankly, Microsoft
software, for all its features and glitz, is not generally very good :-(

-- 

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|    Richard Travers     |*ZFC*|    01736     |     Spuddlers of the      |
|  ri...@argonet.co.uk   |**B**|    757941    |       World Unite!!       | 
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