From: sichermn@csulb.edu (Jeff Sicherman)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: FCC will proclaim Microsoft is run by Communists! : )
Date: 3 Jan 93 18:57:32 GMT
Organization: Cal State Long Beach

In article <8292@lib.tmc.edu> jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
>In article <1993Jan02.091939.18120@microsoft.com> philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara) writes:

   [ deleted ]
>
>>    You bring up functional specifications below - the fact is,
>>MS-DOS doesn't have a rigid one that would allow a clone
>>to be written.
>
>By default, then, MS-DOS' published API qualifies, especially since MS will
>tell you every time you turn around that that's all a programmer should
>use...never mind that MS breaks that rule regularly...

  Although I don't know if it has *legal* significance, I would expect that
there are areas of the API that MS could reasonably violate or not document.
In particular, with the utility programs and drivers that are released when
new versions of DOS itself are released. One could argue that these are
really part of DOS whether they reside within the same code file or not and
so they could share 'special' and intimate knowledge of its internals.

   The question then arises whether if WINDOWS makes use of such knowledge,
whether it is really an extension of DOS both in a technical and a *legal*
sense (since legal issues are at the root of this whole discussion) or it
is really a separate product as well as being an 'environment'.

>
>>Digital Research must have done a lot of
>>reverse engineering, with quite a bit of guesswork.  They
>>got very close - they didn't quite make 100%.
>
>They made 100% to MS-DOS' published API. Since MS says that that's all an
>application developer can depend on, that should be enough.

  As I understand it, the problem was actually that Windows circumvented
as established standard (DPMI) in some way - or short circuited DOS interfaces
with it - with no obvious gain (to outsiders, anyway) - than DR-DOS would no
longer work properly with it.

>>I'm sure that
>>as further incompatibilities are revealed, they will fix them
>>as well.
>
>That should read, "as further MS violations of their own rules are revealed,
>DR will add compatible unpublished interfaces as well."

  I think that calling them violation of their own rules is a little strong.
MS has never, to my knowledge, and often quite the contrary, made any promises
about how DOS works internally or how reliable certain 'discovered', rather
than documented, interfaces may be. I think the issues of fair dealing  are
a little more subtle than that and depend upon different expectations when
an entity effectively controls part or all of a particular market.

>>But I don't expect to see "DR-DOS" applications
>>coming out any time soon, and until then, the people who
>>buy DR-DOS to run their MS-DOS apps are basically taking the
>>gamble that it's going to work.  It's a good bet, but it
>>isn't 100%.
>
>If MS followed the rules, it WOULD be 100%. MS has the power to break DR-DOS
>at will, and all external indications are that they have done exactly that.

    I personally don't see how they could break it for long, given the nature
of todays s/w inplementation and distribution methods, without causing an
awful lot of problems for themselevs and for many, if not most, DOS-based
applications. I think it is indicative of that that they narrowly chose to
'break' it by and with a product that is in many respects and O/S itself and
one which people expect to work differently and perhaps be incompatible.

   With the release of Windows for Workgroups and the folding of DR into
Novell, this all is now really part of a bigger battle for the Network OS
of the future. 


-- 
Jeff Sicherman
up the net without a .sig
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy