The way I got the story when I worked at IBM in the 90s was that the IBM
PC was a project secret even from IBM's management who thought it was
going to be just a new terminal product to work with IBM's System/32
mini computers.
The team from IBM who were developing the PC was interested in acquiring
CP/M for the operating system. Legend has it that Gary Kildall refused
to meet with them because he wanted to go flying instead.
According to the people I worked with at IBM, they went to visit Digital
Research unannounced. The IBM team started off by slapping IBM's
standard, draconian non-disclosure agreement down on the desk & scared
the sh** out of Mrs. Kildall, who told them she couldn't sign it without
talking to her husband Gary - who wasn't there; he'd taken the day off to
be with their daughter.
She asked them to come back the next day, but their itinerary had them
at Microsoft the next day to acquire a license for Microsoft's BASIC
interpreter.
Somewhere in the conversation around licensing Microsoft's BASIC for the
new PC, Gates "just happened to mention" that he had a disk operating
system" that he would gladly demonstrate if they'd come back the next
day (instead of returning to Digital Research to meet with Kildall).
I don't know if Gates had already acquired QDOS from Seattle Computer
Products or not, but I don't think he bothered to mention that IBM
needed an OS before he purchased QDOS from SCP.
On 8/17/2016 7:27 PM, John Coyle wrote:
IIRC, Gates and Balmer bought a licence to CP/M, which had been the
only really successful OS for microcomputers, apart from strictly
proprietary ones such as that used by HP. Even so, it was all a bit
mickey mouse until IBM steam-rollered into play with their IBM PC,
which was basically vastly under-specified, but was like a wet dream
for many people who had suffered using terminals on mainframes and
minis!
John in Brisbane
-----Original Message-----
From: PDML [mailto:pdml-boun...@pdml.net] On Behalf Of Godfrey DiGiorgi
Sent: Thursday, 18 August 2016 08:21
To: PDML List <pdml@pdml.net>
Subject: Re: Mac Yosemite--"This is a bug, not a feature"
On Aug 17, 2016, at 11:16 AM, Bob W-PDML <p...@web-options.com> wrote:
On 17 Aug 2016, at 19:13, John <sesso...@earthlink.net> wrote:
On 8/17/2016 1:34 PM, Bruce Walker wrote:
On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 12:06 PM, P.J. Alling
<webstertwenty...@gmail.com> wrote:
Pisses me off that Microsoft is trying to make the whole OS more
Mac like, in some ways, mostly that aren't helpful.
Mickeysoft has been trying to make their OSes more Mac-like since
Windows 1.0. And they miss the mark every single time.
That is a base canard!
Micro$haft stole the Windoze look 'n feel from Xerox PARK fair & square.
And, unlike Steve Jobs & his NexT computer, they even PAID Xerox to
let 'em in there so they could steal a more accurate copy.
http://mspoweruser.com/bill-gates-response-to-steve-jobs-on-windows-ri
p-off-claim/
I thought I might inject some information into this rapidly-becoming-insipid
thread of BS. From the mouths of the players involved:
"It took a while for Steve Jobs to become interested in Jeff Raskin's
enthusiasm for the work going on at Xerox PARC. Jeff had been trying to get him
interested for some time but Steve considered Jeff too much of a geek to be worth
listening to. Eventually, however, Jeff learned the right way to approach Steve and
Steve went to a presentation at PARC where the Xerox teams working on graphical
systems, object oriented programming, pointing devices, etc, showed off some of
their latest ideas and technology.
Steve was immediately bowled over by what he saw and asked Adele Goldberg (then
manager of the group) for authority to bring his engineering staff in for a
closer look. Adele flatly refused to grant access. She sent a memo up the Xerox
management chain to New York stating that she had no authority to grant access
to Xerox IP to an outside company, and beyond that felt it a very dangerous
thing to do from the point of view of patents and IP. She recommended that the
request be formally denied from the top.
It was a peculiar situation. Xerox management back East really didn't know what
they had been investing in with PARC, few if any successful products had come
out of PARC to date, and they didn't seem to quite understand the intensity of
Adele's response to Steve's request. So when Steve called the CEO and Chairman
of the Xerox board of directors, they invited him to visit for a meeting in New
York.
At the meeting, Steve pointed out that Xerox was a majority stockholder in the
fledgling Apple Computer company at the time. Xerox had been investing a huge
amount of money in Xerox PARC for a decade with little to show other than a
wonderful range of ideas and concepts that hadn't made it into any products
yet. Meanwhile, Apple Computer, then barely three years old, had been
delivering products (and profits in the form of dividends) on a consistent and
increasing basis since they held the stock. Steve wasn't asking for any code or
tangible IP, he was asking for access to people, ideas and concepts that hadn't
made Xerox any money yet on the promise that their holdings in Apple would
increase in value and return them dividends on their investment.
The end result was that the Xerox board of directors agreed to give Steve and
his engineers access and an in-depth tour with PARC's engineering staff, over
Adele's wishes and recommendations. It was apparent during the meetings at PARC
that followed that many of the people who'd been working on the technology for
years were disenchanted with Xerox because they wanted their ideas to make it
into products that people would use, not just sit on the shelves as research
papers. So a good number of them quit PARC over the next year and three, moving
to Apple to re-invent some of their ideas in a form that Apple could use, and
patent, for future products. The first systems that incorporated some of their
ideas were the Apple Lisa and then the original Macintosh.
This is why, when years later Xerox management (not the same folks Steve talked
to in 1979… of course) tried to suit Apple for infringement, the courts threw
the case out.
This all happened half a decade before NeXT existed, btw. The time period is
1979 to 1980; NeXT didn't come into being until 1985.
Microsoft engineering, under the direction of Steve Balmer and Bill Gates, ripped
off many of their ideas for Windows directly from the Xerox folks, at first, and
then from Apple, and actually ballyhooed their skill in doing so without being able
to be caught. They got away with it with some settlement money and other things at a
time when Apple was very weak financially and politically. They never had the
relationship with Xerox that Steve leveraged to obtain access, and the work they
ripped off was more specifically the re-invention/re-imagining of mouse, user
interactions, etc, that were all new work patented by Apple."
(Of course, Balmer and Gates had ripped off someone else's OS source code in
the first place (can't remember who's specifically at the moment) to revise
into a version for a 16-bit processor (Intel 8080) that was then licensed to
IBM (at the time, another big company that knew nothing about what was
happening on the West Coast with respect to microcomputers) with a ridiculously
poor (from IBM's perspective) licensing agreement that left Microsoft with the
ability to sell the OS to anyone they wanted without permission from IBM. Those
Gates and Balmer have a very long history as ripoff artists of the highest
grade, which Bill Gates has only partially eroded by his recent philanthropy
efforts.)
This story was told to me in parts by Alan Kay, Larry Tesler, Adele Goldberg,
Jeff Raskin, Steve Wozniak, and even a little bit by SJ himself, as well as a
couple of the smaller players in the drama at different times and in different
contexts, over a period from about 1986 to 1999. All the pieces told the same
story and fit together nicely, which is why I find it credible.
enjoy
G
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