Linux Hater's Blog (parody)

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 1:11 PM, David Sanders <dsuzukisanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>> That is extremely fishy.  Its the sort of bullcrap I'd expect big
>> corporations to pull in this day and age.
>
> Oh do be serious. Gary Kildall had been an alcholic (though still
> relatively wealthy) bum for a long time before he got whacked on the
> head in a fight. This has been gone over many times, and it isn't
> pretty. If Microsoft did anything to him, it's that they destroyed his
> core business and as good as stole his technology, which no doubt lead
> to his downfall. He was a really clever guy and it's a damned shame,
> but getting out the conspiracy theories makes you sounds nuts.

Strongly agree with this.

I am the last person to apologise for Micros~1 in any way, but whereas
the company is a convicted liar, cheat & thief, I do not think it has
committed murder. Michael, you overstep yourself.

Tim Paterson wrote QDOS (later MS-DOS 1.0) as a direct copy of CP/M,
but I don't think actual code theft was involved.

MS stole the code from Quicktime to create Video for Windows, although
the blame directly belongs to a small firm of contract programmers it
used. (MS lost the lawsuit; it paid $120M as punitive damages. This
was spun as a "strategic investment"; this was a lie.)

MS stole the compression code in DoubleSpace from STAC's Stacker
product; it lost this case in court, too.

MS forced Central Point Software (creators of the original PC-Tools)
into extremely unfair licensing terms for PC-Tool Antivirus (the basis
of MS Antivirus in MS-DOS 6) and Central Point Backup  (the basis of
MS Backup in MS-DOS 6). Both programs were given a\way; CP made no
money from the promised "upgrade revenues" and went out of business.
(There is an Australian software house trading as PC Tools now; AFAICT
it is no relation.)

MS wrote code into WIN.COM in Windows 3.1 to make loading fail with
random errors on DR-DOS 6. It then obfuscated, split up & hid the
code. DR found it, took MS to court and won.

MS lied to the US Gov't that Internet Explorer was an integral part of
Windows 98, to get round an accusation of unfair bundling from
Netscape, when in fact it could be uninstalled. Netscape & the US
government lost this one.

Bill Gates personally lied to Paul Brainerd, head of Aldus, when Aldus
was about to release the first ever Windows word processor, codenamed
"Flintstone". Aldus produced the leading DTP program of the time,
PageMaker. Brainerd killed the project; Gates went home & ordered the
poste-haste development of the appalling Word for Windows 1.0, which
needed a total rewrite to produce the moderately usable WfW 2.

Those are the main ones I know about. I'm sure there are more I've
forgotten. There's not a lot about this on the Web, partly because
most of this predates the Web and partly because history is written by
the winners.

But the Kildalls wouldn't agree to IBM's terms for the licensing of
CP/M-86 for the new "IBM PC", so IBM went to MS, who lied & said they
had a product ready, then bought in Tim Paterson's knock-off.

MS is guilty of lying to IBM then selling it knock-off code, but it
did nothing directly to DR, TTBOMK.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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