Subject:
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Re: Murderer Reno's real crime...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sat, 6 May 2000 19:41:38 GMT
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Viewed:
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223 times
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Mike Petrucelli wrote in message ...
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Bruce Schlickbernd writes:
> > In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Mike Petrucelli writes:
> > > Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and his revolutionary program • Windows.
> > > Nevermind the fact that he stole this program after IBM contracted him to
> > > create it.
> >
> > What grade did you say you got in personal computers 101? :-)
>
> This was all over the news a while ago in the USA. Bill Gates was working • for
> IBM when he created Windows. He then stole that program (which would be • the
> propertey of IBM because they paid him to make it) and founded his own • company.
> Eventually Gates wound up paying like 50 million to IBM for stealing • Windows.
> My point was that Microsoft was founded by illegal activities. The notion
> that they don't engage in illegal practices seems rather laughable to me.
Are you aware that Bill Gates (with Paul Allen) produced one of the FIRST
commercial programs for a personal computer? He wrote BASIC for the Altair
8800 (usually regarded as the first PC) in 1975, 5 years before IBM first
approached Microsoft in 1980. And lest anyone think that Gates couldn't
program his way out of a wet paper bag, one must both acknowledge the BASIC
effort (written in 6 weeks with only the specs of the Altair, it ran the
first time it was actually loaded onto a running computer), and the fact
that as a high school student, he had a successful business producing
traffic light controllers for Seattle.
It is true that Microsoft bought MS-DOS from another company. It is also
true that Windows was being developed alongside OS/2 (in a joint development
agreement), but believe me, if Microsoft had "stolen" anything from IBM,
especially anything as significant as Windows, we wouldn't be hearing about
this anti-trust crud since Microsoft probably wouldn't exist. IBM certainly
doesn't need the FTC to protect it (though IBM had its own run in with
anti-trust law).
It always amuses me that people think Microsoft was made by IBM because of
MS-DOS. In fact, Microsoft was already doing quite well, so well in fact,
that IBM got confused as to who was producing CPM when they wanted an OS for
the PC (Microsoft BASIC was included with most copies of CPM). My personal
feeling is that if anyone made the other, Microsoft made the PC (note that
one reason the clones were successful was that MS-DOS was available from
Microsoft directly, and not just as PC-DOS, which was supposed to only be
sold with an IBM PC).
Microsoft has also had to deal with piracy it's entire life (in fact,
Microsoft was actually founded in part to deal with the piracy of BASIC).
Frank
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Murderer Reno's real crime...
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| (...) This was all over the news a while ago in the USA. Bill Gates was working for IBM when he created Windows. He then stole that program (which would be the propertey of IBM because they paid him to make it) and founded his own company. (...) (24 years ago, 6-May-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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