OOOOOO! You want to talk about the CP/M to MS-DOS thievery? How about the Lotus mugging of VisiCalc? They stole so much the only way to defend themselves was to buy the company they stole from! Early computer software development was definitely the Wild West, with money talking and justice walking.
Even so, granting too broad a patent or copyright stifles progress unnecessarily when a company like Apple uses it to bludgeon others without any merit on their side. They took advantage of our legal system not understanding the whole computer world in the case of Apple vs DRI on the GEM suit. Actually they knew that DRI couldn't pony up the cash to defend themselves and would just knuckle under.
It's amazing that DRI didn't use the same tactics against Bill Gates' MSDOS. Maybe IBM, which decided to use MSDOS, was ready to pony up for the defense and DRI knew they were overmatched. Either way, there is DRI on the losing end of the GEM episode and again losing on the CP/M to MSDOS mugging. They were never a force to be reckoned with again, trying only once more when they pushed DR-DOS out, trying to one-up MSDOS. Didn't work. They couldn't distract enough people.
I'm not totally happy with Microsoft, but at least they are a software company, selling software to anyone with a computer. They aren't necessarily the best. For instance, Aldus Persuasion was a better piece of presentation software in 1991 than Powerpoint is now, with the ability (for instance) to customize text far beyond the anemic abilities of the "standard" of today.
But Microsoft has always been about "good enough" not being the best. And they have been about letting the user decide how the product will be used, not making arbitrary decisions like "games are not going to be played on Microsloth systems." Instead of exclusively supporting their own codecs and telling you to pound sand if you want to use Apple codecs, Microsoft lets you support anything you want. Try Safari in the iPhone and just attempt to play a wmf file. Teee heeee!
Granted, the best of all worlds is represented by the open source Linux world, but some things really are done best by evil corporations. For instance, they alone have demonstrated the cajones and staying power to publish a great submarine simulation. We haven't and I predict we won't see an open source submarine simulation in the same league because voluntary organizations can't maintain the focus and cohesion for the necessary amount of time to produce such a work.
However, comparing Firefox to Internet Explorer any version is like comparing a Ferrari to a 1960's Volkswagon Beetle. I would feel absolutely crippled left with IE as my only browser. So perhaps there are legs in the open source world after all. I think they would be helped by getting over their moral disgust of the commercial world and getting game companies to produce Linux versions. I'd LOVE to play Silent Hunter 4 on my Linux installation! It would be much smoother and more responsive than Windows.
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