[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[Neil Rieck]

On Nov 7, 3:58 am, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:
> Rob Brown schrieb:
>
> > On Fri, 6 Nov 2009 at 20:38 +0100, Michael Kraemer wrote:
>
> >> So this means he stole DECs IP and got away with it?
> >> (where are the IP zealots when they're needed?)
>
> > According to some of the links that NSR gave us, DEC sued Microsoft over
> > this, and won.  Although as also seemed to happen in DEC's suit against
> > Intel, DEC came out on the short end of the settlement.
>
> Only if one presumes that DEC actually wanted to win the lawsuit.
> It is more likely that DEC simply wanted to put some
> pressure on intel so they could get rid of Alpha.
>  From this point of view DEC actually succeeded.

Not sure here if you are interchanging the names "DEC" and "Compaq" on
purpose or not. I never for a moment thought DEC (pre Palmer) wanted
to get rid of Alpha. I had lots of personal contact with DEC between
1978 through to 1993 and can tell you that this company exuded "a
passion for computing" which was infectious. However, I was working in
Maynard Massachusetts in April-1993 and can tell you that "DEC felt
different" (BTW, Palmer replaced Olsen in 1992).

Now if you were referring to DEC after Olsen, it is anyone's guess
what was going on at DEC. I'll tell you one thing, Robert Palmer did
not have a passion for computing that was anywhere close to that of
Ken Olsen.

Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/