From: Doug Franklin
On 2011-08-10 22:33, Doug Franklin wrote:
The analogy it reminds me of is that Android is trying to do for phone
software what the IBM PC did for commodity hardware: define the extent
and form of the commodity. The PC did it by publishing the BIOS source
code and hardware/software interface specs, and /de facto/ establishing
a public programming interface for the software that would ride atop the
hardware and BIOS.
In passing, I should mention that was /not/ IBM's intention, based on
what I've learned about it. To this day, I've never heard from anyone,
inside or out, a reasonable justification for some of the information
they freely published, other than simply a (catastrophic) strategic
miscalculation.
An IBM PC Technical Reference Manual in 1984 or so (or PC XT, PCjr, PC
AT manuals, as they came out) cost around $250, if my memory serves me.
It was freely available to any buyer with the cash if they called IBM.
Those manuals contained:
* all of the hardware signalling interfaces, electric, electronic, and
timing
* all of the hardware physical characteristics, down to the drill
centers, diameters, and threading for the mounting screws
* the complete assembly language source code for the BIOS in the machine
(and thus all of the hardware interfacing information necessary for a
cloner)
* full interface specs for all of the ancillary hardware in the machine
(serial ports, parallel ports, ISA bus add-on cards, etc.) so that was
easily duplicated, too.
It's like they designed the offering to be cloned.
The IBM PC wasn't an "official" IBM product. A lot of what the PC
company did was to entrench the IBM PC deeply into the market before the
suits in the corporate office could kill it. Which they eventually did
anyway.
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