DOS

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Revision as of 15:36, 16 January 2009

comes: SCP Microsoft 86-dos license agreement ..

This license agreement is made and entered into this 6th day of January, 1981, by and between SEATTLE COMPUTER PRODUCTS INC, a Washington Corporation (hereinafter referred to as SCP), and MICROSOFT, a Washington general partnership (hereinafter referred to as MS)

WHEREAS, MS desires to obtain non-exclusive rights to market the product defined in Paragraph 1, below ..

1. PRODUCT

The product is a single-user disk operating system with utilities for the 8086 microprocessor which has the name "86-DOS" ..

2. RIGHTS BEING LICENSED

(a) 86-DOS OBJECT CODE TO END USERS: This License Agreement conveys to MS the right to distribute 86-DOS in object code form only to an unlimited number of end users ..

(b) 86-DOS OBJECT CODE TO OEMS (NO PER COPY ROYALTY) .. a royalty of $10,000

(c) 86-DOS OBJECT CODE TO OEMS (WITH PER COPY ROYALTY) .. an initial fee of $1,000 plus a royalty of $25 for each copy of 86-DOS licensed ..

(d) 86-DOS OBJECT SOURCE CODE .. a royalty of $5,000

..

3. PAYMENT:

MS will pay SCP $10,000 upon signing of this agreement Payment of the initial fee described in Paragaph 2(c), above and royalties called for under this Agreement shall be due within 45 days of the date MS invoices their customer for the product for which the initial fee or royalty is due ..

(c) Nothing in this License Agreement shall require MS to identify its customers to SCP ..

http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/0000/PX00001.pdf

COLA COMMENTS:

> Was that a DOS microsoft bought out and buried? Cos I thought MSDOS was based on QDOS which was a ripoff of CP/M?

86-DOS was a renamed QDOS and yes it was a 'ripoff' of CP/M although not enough of one for Gary Kildall to garner any comfort ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS

comes: not letting the big manufacturers off the per system hook ..

From jaramybu Wed Jun 22 13:55:35 1988

To: richardF cc: Joachimk

Revenue for our divisions is not the main issue. If we start letting the big manufacturers off the per system hook, our 100& goal for DOS penetration depends on our success with a larger number of smaller accounts, and threatens our dominance ...

http://iowa.gotthefacts.org/011607/0000/PX00023.pdf

resistance from WIN customers ..

From: D-OEM From: Joachim Date: July 5 - 1988 RE: DOS 4 0 - US Sales Policy

..

Do not confuse the customer with Windows talk. We will try to "upgrade" NON-WIN customers in Q3 FY89 when WIN3.0 is real. Sell what you have. If there is resistance from WIN customers to take the shell for their 286 and 386 machines. I want to know about it. We might consider to sweeten the deal. But remember, IBM compatibility will mean to carry the shell.

..

MS is planning to implement an upgrade for MS - packaged goods customers only. This will be done in a low key fashion through advertising and fulfillment with proof of purchase requirements. This is done on a limited basis only and should NOT concern our OEMs. The price for the upgrade package will be approximately $60.

http://iowa.gotthefacts.org/011607/0000/PX00026.pdf

have bambi refuse to run on this alien OS

From: chuckst Sun Sep 29 17:16:46 1991 To: mikedr; philba; scottq Subject: Bambi on DR-DOS 6.0 Date: Sun Sep 29 17:16:39 1991

I tracked down a serious incompatibility with DR-DOS 6 - They don't use the 'normal' device driver interface for > 32M partitions. Instead of setting the regular START SECTOR field to 0ffffh and then using a brand new 32-bit field the way MS-DOS has always done, they simply extend the start sector field by 16 bits. .. I've patched a version of Bambi to work with DRD6, and it seems to run Win 3.1 without difficulty. This same problem may have caused other problems with Win 3.1 and the swapfile under DRD6.

It is possible to make Bambi work, assuming we can come up with a reasonably safe method for detecting DRD6. .. What do you think? Should we test further with the patched Bambi to see if there are any more incompatibilities?

From: philba Mon Sep 30 08:15:02 1991 To: bradsi Cc: davidcol Subject: Bambi on DR-DOS 6.0 Date: Sat, 28 Sep 91 07:57:50 PDT

hey, hey, hey ....

my proposal is to have bambi refuse to run on this alien OS, comments?

http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/010807/PLEX_0981.pdf

non-tested DOS warning code

To: Russ werner From: Mark Chestnut Subject: Status Report for April, 1989 Date 5/22/89

The first MS product with the non-tested DOS warning code, Quick Pascal, was released. Tom Reeve and Cindy Kasin have committed to implementing it in all new MS application and language releases from this point forward, including international.

I am also planning to hire an Independent DOS guru to do an in-depth comparative analysis of MS vs DR DOS, with the idea of somehow making those results available to the press. This could be useful ammunition to have against DRI, and will be of value even if we choose not to make it public. I approached Ray Duncan about doing this but he finally said 'no thanks’, so I am now talking to Rick Wilton, another DOS guru who writes for MS Press.

MS on feeding press with DR-DOS bugs

From brade Fri Sep 20 17:31:57 1991 To: bradsi Cc: bradc; braddir; dosmktg; lizsi; w-carrin; w-maria Subject: PC Week and DR DOS Date: Fri Sep 20 17:32:48 PDT 1991

Carrine's great work got us the opportunity to feed pc week some info on where to look for bugs with dr dos. I have had a couple of conversations with lenny bailes who is helping with the ms-dos 5 versus dr-dos 5 evaluation process.

Today tom and i talked to him. on the negative side i probably brought up one two many things for him to look at. it is difficult to appropriately and professionally try and trash your competitor. also on the negative side, lenny clearly seems to be a dr dos fan. to be fair i think he is sincere and is trying to be balanced.

also on the negative side he did tells us that under 1 meg dr dos 6 was better than ms-dos 5 on 7 out of 10 machines they tested. no real details but i think the differences will be small.

on the positive side they did themselves find some of the setup problems (such as poor updating to config.sys) and he has passed on to the pc weeks labs some of these configurations we suggested they look at that we uncovered with dr dos 5. he was also intrigued by some of the data from yesterday's dr-dos 6 test, in particular tom's problems when he entered a ton of nested directory names.

http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/0000/PX00964.pdf

display alien Dos message function

if(!Verify_DOS() DisplayAlienDosMessage();

..

near DisplayAlienDosMessage(void)

{

print(9,TAB,"WARNING: Microsoft QuickPascal has been tested for use");

print(lO,TAB,"only with the MS-DOS and PC-DOS operating systems.");

print(12,TAB,"Your use of this product with another operating system");

print(13,TAB,"may void valuable warranty protection provided by");

print(14,TAB,"Microsoft on QuickPascal.");

print(16,TAB,"...Press any key to continue");

getch();

return(1);

}

feel uncomfortable using DR-DOS

To: davidcol Subject: RE: message Date: Mon, 10 Feb 92 08:51:10 PST

what the guy is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is dr-dos and then go out and buy ms-dos, or decide not to take the risk for the other machines he has to buy for in the office.

..

From bradsi; Mon Feb 10 10:50:05 1992 To: steveb Subject: Re: the message Date: Mon, 10 Feb 92 10:50:05 PST

i am saying that we should either:

b) put a kind gentle message in setup. like an incompatible tsr message, but not everytime the user starts windows .. the most sensible thing from a development standpoint is to continue to build dependencies on msdos into windows.

aard: how to explain the encrypted code ..

From: darbyw To: Bradsi Cc: darbyw Subject: FW: DOS Practices Date: Wednedsday, September 01, 1993 8:55 AM

Thanks,Brad, I don't think this addresses the issue of our encrypting the code .. how do I explain that. I've got everything else programmed in my response.

..

From: bradsi

..

.. we do not test on other systems nor can we verify the stability of windows running on anything other than msdos ..

http://iowa.gotthefacts.org/011607/7000/PX07693.pdf

'You never sent me a response on what things an app would do that would make it run with MS-DOS and not run with DR-DOS'

"the approach that ralph and I have discussed is to use a vxd to 'extend' dos by patching it .. We would not patch unknown OSs"

http://iowa.gotthefacts.org/011607/0000/PX00979.pdf

http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/

purpose of the AARD code

January 12 2007

RONALD ALEPIN, recalled as a witness, having been previously duly sworn, testified as follows:

REDIRECT EXAMINATION (CONT'D)

BY MR. LAMB:

Q. When we broke yesterday we were discussing the AARD code. And yesterday morning Mr. Holley asked you if there was a malfunction in the AARD code. Do you recall that question?

A. I recall a question concerning malfunctioning and the AARD code.

Q. And your response was no, there was no malfunction; right?

A. That's correct.

Q. And you testified that there wasn't a real error. It was a false error; right?

A. That's correct.

Q. Okay. By false error, do you mean that it was not true?

A. Yes.

Q. Now, have you seen evidence in the record that leads you to believe that Microsoft knew that the AARD code was not a true error?

A. Yes.

Q. What did you see?

A. Well, there is a discussion of -- in the record concerning what the purpose was for the code. It was to detect a non-Microsoft operating system, and that in and of itself is -- was not an error. And the purpose for installing the code was not to detect errors, but to detect a different operating system ...

http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/TP011207.txt

those rabid DR-dogs ..

From: tomle Fri Sep 28 06:40:31 1990 To: bradsi; ericst; markche; mikedr; philba Cc: tomle Subject: What would you be doing now

If you were one of those those rabid DR-dogsin the UK what would you be doing about now. .. If I were DR development, I would be hard at work on a release 5.1 that would match everything we have in Dos 5.0 plus .. Our official strategy implies we top them with Dos 5, which we will do, and then we're in the drivers seat ..

comes v Microsoft http://iowa.gotthefacts.org/011607/9000/PX09557.pdf

problems with rom-DRDOS 6.0 and win ..

From: bradsi Sun Jan 12 16:04:17 1992 Subject: Re: FW: problems with rom-DRDOS 6.0 and win ..

ok, post a nice SOL msg. bottom line is that he needs msdos- something that is compatible with windows

comes v microsoft http://iowa.gotthefacts.org/011607/9000/PX09840.pdf

MS on attacking the counterfeiting of MS-DOS ..

From: Jeff Alder Date: September 4, 1991

..

In order to attack the counterfeiting of MS-DOS and increase the penetration in the naked PC market. THIN-DOS will be introduced in early November ..

..

BENEFITS

A competitive defense against DR_DOS provided by 2-3 year license agreements

A substantial decrease in the profit incentive and oppurtunities for counterfeiters

comes v microsoft http://iowa.gotthefacts.org/011607/9000/PX09834.pdf