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

[Arne Vajhøj]

Michael Kraemer wrote:
> Arne Vajhøj schrieb:
>> Michael Kraemer wrote:
>>> So this means he stole DECs IP and got away with it?
>>> (where are the IP zealots when they're needed?)
>>
>> Would it have made a big difference?
> 
> I was wondering that an (apparently disgruntled) employee
> can walk out of his previous employer's door,
> with a tape (real or virtual) under his arm,
> essentially offering that stuff to a competitor.
> Without being sued.
> Iirc SCO has sued IBM for lesser evidence.

Things were different in 1988 than in 2009 when
it comes to IP.

Ken Olsen was an engineer not a lawyer.

And besides: how much was really copied?

Code was not copied - C instead of Bliss & Macro.

Shell was not copied - CMD instead of DCL (lousy change BTW).

GUI was not copied - MS Windows instead of DECWindows.

File system was not copied - NTFS instead of ODS-2.

Memory management and IO subsystem were apparently extremely
identical.

But if it ended up in court - how much of it was originall DEC and
not known from Multics/Unix/various IBM/standard computer science ?

(think MS - Apple - Xerox)

Probably still some, but probably not more than could easily be changed.

So DEC could only get as much much money as it would have cost MS
to rewrite N number of kernel modules.

Arne