30 Mar
2014
30 Mar
'14
3:02 a.m.
On Mar 28, 2014 11:30 AM, "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
Paterson's/Seattle Computer Product's Q-DOS
(which later became 86-DOS,
MS-DOS, and PC-DOS) was deliberately a "place-holder" for anticipated
CP/M, and deliberately matched the user-interface and system calls of
CP/M. That was generally considered legal at the time, and Digital
Research did not sue - Gary Kildall was not litigious, and believed that
the market would sort it out. What they DID get was an agreement by IBM
to ALSO market CP/M-86, although $400 V $40 did not help the market to
"sort it out".
I beg to differ. The 10X difference in price most definitely did help the
market to "sort it out". There was essentially no confusion in the market
at all regarding which OS to use.