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Dos Ain't Done 'til Lotus Won't Run

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I was originally going to do a post on this, but Adam (who interviewed me on the topic before he came back to Microsoft) just posted this article and did a far better job of it than I could have ever done (he actually went out did research and stuff).

So go to Adam's blog and enjoy Adam's thorough debunking of a canard.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2005
    Vince, that's totally unrelated to whether or not there was a motto "Dos Ain't done...".

    I wrote a bit on the AARD check here a year or so ago here:
    http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/08/12/213681.aspx
    and here: http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/08/13/214338.aspx

  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2005
    You can say all you want about the DR-DOS issue, but it went to court for a long time (http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,20128,00.html)
    and eventually MS settled (http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/comments/446624.aspx).


    I'm sure you all will claim that the whole Stack/Doublespace issue was some sort of horrible misunderstanding as well.

    The computer industry does have a short memory, but some of us were there and still remember.
  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2005
    That last link should have been http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,14739,00.asp


    And yes, Firefox is pushing the IE team. Though you must admit it's a miracle that anyone is pushing the IE team at all, considering how thoroughly MS destroyed netscape. At least the whole bundle-the-browser-in-the-OS is going to bite you guys, when it turns out that to get the "new" features of ie7 in MS OS's other than Vista people are going to have to install Firefox.
  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2005
    Vince, ALL I'm saying is that "DOS Ain't Done 'til Lotus won't run" is a canard, and never existed. Nothing more, nothing less.

    The DR-DOS was a big deal, but there were valid technical reasons for blocking it, and those valid technical reasons WERE legitimate (read the court ruling denying the injunction).

    Stac/Doublespace WAS a horrible misunderstanding. As I recall it, the Stac patent covered one specific compression algorithm and Doublespace used a totally separate compression algorithm. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the jury felt that even though the compression mechanism was totally different, the Stac patent covered the entire concept of compression of the disk. That's the thing about juries - you can't predict how they'll act.

  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2005
    I was there too Vince and Microsoft didn't destroy Netscape, Netscape did. The same is true for WordPerfect. I was an AVID Netscape and WordPerfect user and I switched to MS products because they were better. I still remember trying to use Netscape 4.2 and getting tired of all the problems. Sure, IE was icky (technical term), but it worked better than Netscape. The same was true for Borland. I used Borland C++ compilers for years before I switched to MS because MS was better.

    BTW. This is being posted from a Firefox browser because it is better than IE. When IE7 comes out, I'll take a look at it.
  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2005
    vince, if you are an american, you should know better than anyone that lawsuits have little to do with "justice" and more to do with commercial tactics. Often it's just easier to settle out of court than to spend time and money litigating, even if you have reason on your side.

    Here's a suggestion: why don't you go back to Slashdot? I'm sure that you'd find a much more receptive audience there.
  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2005
    PaulJBis:
    > if you are an american, you should know better than anyone that
    > lawsuits have little to do with "justice" and more to do with
    > commercial tactics.

    Well yes, otherwise it would be impossible to explain how MS escaped any sort of real punishment during the most recent anti-trust suit.

    For some interesting reading, check out Caldera's statement of facts from the DR-DOS trial: http://www.maxframe.com/DR/Info/fullstory/factstat.html It makes some fascinating reading.

    > Here's a suggestion: why don't you go back to Slashdot? I'm sure that
    > you'd find a much more receptive audience there.

    Why do people assume that if you don't like MS you are somehow some sort of Slashdot user?
    I have been vocally critical of MS's business practices for way longer than Slashdot has even existed.

    I will admit there are 3 Microsoft products that I really liked and used extensively.
  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2005
    Stac/Doublespace:

    Actually, they were the same compression algorithm - Stac had a patent on it. Microsoft also had a patent on a compression algorithm too - the same one. (And one that they spent a lot of time searching for, so they wouldn't infringe Stac's patent). Unfortunately, the people at fault here were the USPTO.
  • Anonymous
    August 05, 2005
    Simon,

    Do you happen to have a link to a patent search system or the patents in question? I thought IBM had one (patent search site), but I can't find it.
  • Anonymous
    August 05, 2005
    The important patents are the Waterworth patent and the Gibson & Graybill patent.

    http://www.ross.net/compression/patents_by_coverage.html

    http://www.ross.net/compression/patents_notes_from_ccfaq.html

    http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Newsletter/programming.freedom.7.html#gateshell

    http://www.faqs.org/faqs/compression-faq/part1/section-7.html

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2005
    Maybe there is a corollary that "the blog ain't done 'til the red herring is sung," or something like that. Lotus seems to me to be entirely a red herring in this particular phase. The general question implied by the phrase in question is whether Microsoft ever wrote code to torpedo a competitor. I never heard of that even being a serious question with regard to Lotus 1-2-3, but it was a serious question on the front as to whether Windows was intentionally coded to not run on DR-DOS. Andrew Schulman's investigation on that topic is still available at http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=1030/ddj9309d/ - I suggest that the interested reader visit that page for themselves and make their own judgement.