[Ham-Computers] Re Upgrades Windows 98 And Spell Check

[Paul]

WA5CAB at cs.com wrote:
> Actually, to correct some historical inaccuracies in this thread, although 
> "DOS" in the past say five years, maybe more, has come to be assumed to mean 
> MSDOS, at the time most of these anecdotes took place, there were quite a few 
> different versions of "DOS" (which merely means Disk Operating System).  MSDOS 
> was originally IBMDOS (Gates and an associate whose name is probably lost 
> developed it originally for Big Blue).  There were also several flavors of Commodore 
> DOS, Apple DOS, etc. etc. etc.  Somehow, Gates managed to split off (and 
> rename) MSDOS from IBM and started marketing it to other computer manufacturers.  
> CP/M (Control Program for Microprocessors) is also a "DOS".

Originally developed by Seattle Computer Products, QDOS (stood for 
'quick & dirty operating system' because it was written in only 6 weeks) 
was derived from cp/m.

The rights were bought by Microsoft, and they renamed it MS-DOS & tidied 
it up - prior to this Gates and Paul Allen distributed computer 
software, including their own Microsoft Basic.

Whilst they were dealing with QDOS they kept from them that they were 
negotiating with IBM.

The guy who wrote QDOS (Tim Paterson) subsequently left Seattle Computer 
Products and joined MS.

When they dealt with IBM, MS sold licenses and retained the rights to 
the software (as they've done ever since) - which is how they managed to 
distribute PC-DOS to IBM & MS-DOS to others.

As MS-DOS developed they took ideas from others and added to it. For 
example, Apples WIMP became Windows,and Stacker's disk-compression 
application was lifted to become 'Doublespace'. Stacker had been 
approached with an offer to add it to MS-DOS 6, MS said they would pay 
nothing to Stacker - they argued that the inclusion would increase the 
sales of other Stacker products. When DOS 6 was released, Stacker sued 
MS & won.

(BTW, the MS compression was faulty, some people lost data and MS 
charged USD10 for the upgrade - MS-DOS 6.2. A class action followed, 
arguing that MS should be held responsible for their screw-ups, which 
was successfully defended by MS lawyer Harriet Miers)

Unfortunately MS counter-sued, saying that the only way that Stacker 
could know that their algorithms were used in Doublespace was if they 
reverse-engineered it which was contrary to the licensing agreement, 
they also won their case.

There are still variations about, notably FreeDOS which is compatable 
with MS-DOS.

Paul 5B8BA