28 Nov
2025
28 Nov
'25
3:45 p.m.
> Technically that is not accurate. While DEC is no
longer a standalone
> company, its property still has an owner, but nowadays that's either VSI,
> HP, or XX2247 depending on which parts you're talking about.
On Sat, 29 Nov 2025, Doug Jackson via cctalk wrote:
And even HP is a farce of a company now - a sad sad
shell compared to what
they were.
They were once amazingly great; now they are like Kodak and Polaroid,
making more from licensing the trademark than from merchandise.
For example, my first Android (that I bought just to play with and learn
Android) was manufactured by or for Southwest Bell but doesn't have a
phone; and had a brand name of "Polaroid"!, although it didn't have a
camera either.
Who actually owns the software? Have we considered
going to them and
asking? It worked for CP/M - which is now unencumbered.
There were several reasons for that.
Gary Kildall was not as obsessively competitive as BillG
Gary was a helluva nice guy.
Blowing off the original IBM meeting may have been the stupidest business
move of all time, but it was also one of the BRAVEST, to stand up and
thumb your nose at therm!
Novell was having ongoing legal battles with Microsoft over what they
could or could not use in their software. When Novell bought Digital
Research, I THINK that the only asset that they wanted was the copyright
of CP/M; they sold off and/or gave away everything other than that, which
they weren't stingy about. They wanted rights to it, not necessarily even
exclusive. If Microsoft EVER did another copyright infringement legal
action, . . .
"OK, you are angry that we copied some user intaface stuff, etc. But, we
now own rights to what YOU copied it from."
It was a "Get out of jail free card" for any similarities to MS-DOS.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com