From: Benjamin Koh (benkoh_at_stanford.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 22 2000 - 15:39:24 EDT
> those who have been in the software business know that M$ didn't even
> do many inventions, most of their technology came by M$ taking over
> some other company or by plain copying others. M$ has a long history
> with the law, since the 1991 they've been sued for many things including
> the DRDOS scum.
>
Longtime DOS heads may also remember the Stacker debacle. Stac
Electronics made outstanding realtime compression software that (in its
last version) gave actual 2:1 or better ratios. They also had a hardware
ISA version, but discontinued it when 386/486 machines showed no
significant speed penalty using just software. Stac made the mistake of
entering licensing talks with Microsoft. When the talks broke down,
Microsoft reused the code Stac had shared to create Drivespace and
packaged it with MS-DOS 6. This was illegal, but by the time the courts
declared Stac the winner of the lawsuit, it was game over for Stac - too
many people had already discovered that an inferior (but usable) product
is infinitely better in a cost/benefit analysis when the cost is zero.
Benjamin
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