-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Knews [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 10:06 AM
To: "Joseph T. Tannenbaum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "rpjday"
Cc: recipient.list.not.shown; @nswcphdn.navy.mil
Subject: RE: MS Breakup
Some of you folks have really got to get with it on the technology aspect.
We do not owe MS anything. First of all they have a severe track record of
aquiring existing technology, then making it "their own" (such that others
come to think MS did it in the first place) by changing it, or making some
bells and whistles.... SECOND, if MS were not around, someone else would
have done it, like Apple, or Linux would have come along anyway and
GNOME/KDE would look more like MAC interfaces or some such thing
(hypothetical). Get off the track of thought that we are in debt to MS.
No such thing. What MS is very good at due to Bill is his bigus mouthus in
the medias. That he is good at. I personally don't care to buy product from
hot wind, but from open source like Linux on the net.
-------------End Original Message ------------------------------
Jon, I'm sorry to say, but we do owe Microsoft a few (positive) things:
The machine on your desk wouldn't exist if not for the foundations built
on MS-DOS. Sure, I know, you run Linux now... but the machine is based
on commodity parts that were produced to run an OS championed by IBM for
he business world. Intel designed those parts, but if Microsoft hadn't had
an OS to run the system on, in all likelihood, the use "critical mass"
required
to lower the prices down to the current levels, and raise the performance
to these current levels, would not have existed. I'm not saying Gates
invented DOS (he didn't); I'm not saying that he invented the killer
app(again,
he didn't. Visicalc did); I'm not saying he invented the PC(IBM, Intel,
etc.).
But his company was critical in those early stages. Without him, we might
be
using TR-DOS, CP/M, or some other legacy OS as the "mainstream" OS, and
saturation
would be a lot less.
Just to let you know, though, Microsoft wasn't always the world conquering,
arrogant company they became. I once bought a copy of Microsoft Multiplan
for the TI 99/4A back in 1983, worked great, was widely supported on many
non MS platforms, etc. I was still using it regularly until 1990, when I
got
a copy of Lotus 1-2-3 to replace it.
They once cared about other OSes. They simply got too big.
Bill Ward
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