Page 3 - Working On Saturday: Courtesy of Microsoft

I don't know where IIS came from, but two of my favorite bedtime stories regarding crooked Microsoft dealings:

Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer was basically just a licensed version of the old Mosaic code at first. Microsoft was losing the war in the digital world and needed to play catch-up. The funny thing is, they offered the browser for free, essentially screwing Spyglass Inc. out of a ton of royalties (how do you collect a % royalty on something that's being given out for free?). Eventually, they used this stolen product to illegally increase their monopoly power and single-handedly managed to kill a great deal of web-development's potential in one fell swoop, thus insuring that they could play catch-up at their own liesurely pace.

DriveSpace (remember that?)

This one's good....

DriveSpace is disk compression software that was stolen line for line in some places from a company called Stacker (remember them?). Stacker successfully prosecuted Microsoft in court over the violations, but by that time they had no market share for their product because Microsoft was giving it away for free with their Operating System. On the verge of bankruptcy, Stacker was forced to make a last ditch attempt to save themselves by licensing their code to Microsoft... an effort which ultimately proved futile and ensured that Microsoft effectively remained the only game in town...

And then you can go into GUI taken from Xerox, DOS taken from CPM, Windows 95 UI taken from MacOS () and things like Frontpage being bought from Vermeer Technology (hence the vt_ prefix on folders).... hangon... have they actually got something they made themselves and havent ripped off someone else? Well.... besides a sodded annoying paperclip!

You guys complain to much... just use what you like.

---John Holmes...

Sorry, but has anyone ever made anything himself without copying from someone else? Supply some examples. I don't want to be hypercritical about Microsoft because there is a foundation for everything.

Allow me to be an a$$ for a second. Don't hate me though, I'm really not like this usually. But I think what's important about a program is that it gets discovered by people. Nobody markets a product better than Microsoft. If DriveSpace can't get recognition under Stacker, then by all means let Microsoft do the marketing. Remember, your product is only as good as the people who know about it.

For example, there are tons of consulting companies out there. A lot of them do the same things. By your analogy, they are all ripping eachother off. The only way to avoid ripping off someone is to have an idea only used once. Now, obviously that means there has to be 6 million new ideas everyday. You can see pretty soon we'll run out of refreshing ideas.

Ideas are good things. Smart people keep great ideas in mind.

and how, just how again, have we been able to advance so much in science and technology? Surely it wasn't by keeping our mouths shut. It was by complaining. By all means, voice your opinions. No idea is too radical.

Yeah, but if Stacker dont get recognition for their work then its wrong

Umm... but Microsoft got it recognized by literally STEALING it from Stacker. I realize that there's a fine line between common Marketing practice and felony behavior, but Microsoft crosses that line far too often. It's a lot like this SCO vs. The World thing, except Microsoft really did steal code line for line from Stacker and was found GUILTY for it. It's just that Microsoft was giving away Stacker's code for free with the OS, so they couldn't make a living selling it and Stacker got stomped. How would you feel if you wrote a really great product only to realize that the next version of Windows was including literally YOUR CODE in the OS for free so that you couldn't sell it to anyone?


I disagree sodier-man

If there's something I don't like I'm going to speak up about it. Granted, noone has to LISTEN to me so it may not do me any good, but I can still try. I think that Microsoft's irresponsible business practices deserve being spoken against (as do many, many other people in an out of the tech field, apparently). Not only that, I've been working extra-long hours recently because those idiots can't write a half-decent web server...

Becoming a big company with tons and tons of money doesn't suddenly mean you should ignore the law and become morally bankrupt, although, that seems to be how it works in big business...

I would indeed feel how Stacker felt, although I don't know how much better I would feel if I wrote a really great product only to realize no one cares because they don't know. But I was just being an a$$ on a Thursday midnight.

Yea, well I'm not gonna let you off that easy!

On top of all that, it's not that Stacker couldn't get recognition for the product, it's that Microsoft stole it from them and started giving it away for free. If you already have it freely built-in to your OS, why pay Stacker for it? For all we'll ever know, it could've been a multi-million dollar megahit had Microsoft not ripped the market out from underneath Stacker by stealing the code.

Can we assume Microsoft simply thinks it can steal code from others without letting them know? That's a scary thought, and they would drive out a lot of competition with that strategy.

I hope they're not to that point. What's stopping them from making Winzip part of Windows?

What's to say they already haven't?!?!?!?

[scary music plays...]

Man - all the MS haters. Why? Why does everyone hate MS? Is it that we are all jealous becuase we are not successfull (well, as successfull) as MS is? Is there really a legitimate argument to hate MS and every single piece of software that comes from them.

Links is the best piece of gaming software on the planet and that came from MS. Windows may not be the best OS - but it is the most widely used; kudos to them for some of the greatest marketing achievements ever.

Sure, we must all be faithfull to our open-source religion - but it gets out of control sometimes.

There is not one person on this forum that would turn down a chance to be an integral part of the MS Corporation for a cool 2-mil a year, so why be a hater?...