[Elecraft] ELEPRODUCT POLL

[N2EY at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/14/04 8:12:28 PM Eastern Daylight Time, vic at rakefet.com 
writes:


> In my opinion the open spec is what made the IBM PC the industry 
> standard.  And I said 'the IBM PC', not IBM!  

Agreed! Remember the old saying: "Nobody ever got fired for specifying IBM"

But there was another event that knocked IBM's PCs for a loop.

The BIOS in the IBM PCs was copyrighted. Which meant that early "IBM 
compatibles" might or might not run various software packages written for the IBM PC. 
IBM wouldn't sell the BIOS, and if it was copied, they'd sue for copyright 
infringement and probably win.

Then a company (Franklin?) came up with a work-around. They hired a team of 
developers to look at the BIOS and write a functional description document that 
did not have any actual code in it. This document simply defined in very 
precise terms what the BIOS did - but not how it was done.

Then a second team got the document and a compatible PC with no BIOS. Their 
job was to write the BIOS according to the functional description document. 
Which they did. 

This team had to be certified as never having had anything to do with the 
BIOS in an IBM PC, so there could be no claim of plaigarism.

It's kind of like having someone read Moby Dick and write a very detailed 
description of the story that has none of the original text in it, then have 
someone else who had never heard of the book write a novel from the description. 
It might not be Melville but the story would be the same. 

Of course IBM fought back but the court ruled that it wasn't a copyright 
infringement  . That meant other companies could build true "IBM compatible" 
computers. 

73 de Jim, N2EY