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RE: Then Everything Must Be Free
Bill Gates signed a contract with IBM that put a copy of DOS on every computer on their assembly line.
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/rants/pc.html I didn't know that - I thought IBM had it's own brand of DOS. There were dozens of DOS's running around for awhile. And once loaded, most programs didn't even need it aside from needing to access the filesystem easily. But even then, a lot of programmers resorted to calling BIOS interrupts instead of DOS's 21h interrupt.
To which I see the point that ...
I contest that Microsoft should never have existed...
When I began assembly programming on the hardware (pre-Win95) I really didn't see the point of DOS at all. How the empire was built on DOS alone is quite amazing. And people used to think "Oh! DOS 6.22 is so much better than DOS 6."
A prime example of software not relying on DOS were games. A lot of games utilized their own memory extensions or used the Flat Memory model to access the RAM above 1MB. As soon as that happened, DOS was as useless as the BIOS. Remember having to customize each game to the soundcard?
I think a lot of the interfaces that exist now (like DirectX or OpenGL) should not be software interfaces as much as they should be firmware interfaces. Then you have a plug 'n play system where the processor on board the hardware interprets what the code wants. The problem is getting hardware vendors to want to do that. It's been shown before that graphics cards would cheat in benchmarks by making use of the CPU and having the drivers do some of the work instead of strictly the GPU.
RE: Then Everything Must Be Free
Imagine a world where software developers all worked directly for hardware manufacturers ...
I guess I have a question at this point. Are you talking about all software being freely distributed, or just operating systems?
I work with CAD/CAM software. Solid modeling, generating tool paths for machining, etc. It's hard to imagine these companies that charge 15,000 a seat would want to give it away for free, or freely distribute the 'secrets' of a patented tool path algorithm to the world. But, that’s working under the present system of distribution as you described.
I have to admit, it's an interesting thing to imagine what might have happened if Microsoft never came to be. On one hand, software may still have developed into a "product" like it is today, because there are so many different specialty applications, especially in industry. It's also very possible that systems like Linux might never have evolved. I always sense the burning hatred toward Microsoft when out on the net. I've always felt that this vehement aversion is what actually drives much of the innovation in the GNU/free software arena. Without a Microsoft, is the spark gone, or would there just be something else to hate?
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RE: Then Everything Must Be Free
But the reason DOS was everywhere was because IBM had let all the programmers know how to utilize their hardware.
Wha? Bill Gates signed a contract with IBM that put a copy of DOS on every computer on their assembly line...the industry standardized and the rest is history.
Microsoft would have been limited to whomever they had a deal with to make their operating system.
My point exactly. I contest that Microsoft should never have existed...at least not in the format that it was in...they were the FIRST "Software company" I think its a silly notion to be honest...it left a lot of programmers of the time scratching their heads...which...again, was the reason for the development of GNU which came out in the umm.. early 80s I think...
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