Live data from Hacker News

There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

thenextweb.com

11–20 of 73 posts

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#11
Some context from the QDOS wiki posted below

> Controversy has continued to surround the similarity between the two systems. Perhaps the most sensational claim comes from Jerry Pournelle, who claims that Kildall personally demonstrated to him that DOS contained CP/M code by entering a command in DOS that displayed Kildall's name; as of 2006 Pournelle has not revealed the command and nobody has come forward to corroborate his story. A 2004 book about Kildall says that he used such an encrypted message to demonstrate that other manufacturers had copied CP/M, but does not say that he found the message in DOS; instead Kildall's memoir (a source for the book) pointed to the well-known interface similarity. Paterson insists that the 86-DOS software was his original work, and has denied referring to or otherwise using CP/M code while writing it. After the 2004 book appeared, he sued the authors and publishers for defamation. The court ruled in summary judgement that no defamation had occurred, as the book's claims were opinions based on research or were not provably false.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS

If this command existed in MSDOS this most certainly would have come up in court for far more than $100k by now, no? This is a good way to dispell the myth though.

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#12

> 22 system calls ... that had the same function (and function number) as the CP/M code. That probably shows evidence of reverse engineering, not code copying, similar to the clean-room reimplementation of IBM's BIOS chips by Compaq. > the types of actions that send/receive text from a printer, phone, hard disk, etc. I know they are giving examples for a modern audience, but I was amused by the inclusion of phones in…

No reverse engineering necessary. Those CP/M system calls were all documented, and it never was a secret that QDOS was heavily modelled after CP/M.

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#13

> 22 system calls ... that had the same function (and function number) as the CP/M code. That probably shows evidence of reverse engineering, not code copying, similar to the clean-room reimplementation of IBM's BIOS chips by Compaq. > the types of actions that send/receive text from a printer, phone, hard disk, etc. I know they are giving examples for a modern audience, but I was amused by the inclusion of phones in…

system calls in msdos were interrupts, so you would do the interrupt (int 21h for most parts) with different values of ah register to select the requested service (and remaining registers for arguments). My MS/DOS is a bit rusty - here is the norton guide - the MSDOS bible. http://www.ousob.com/ng/asm/index.php

> int 21h

http://www.ctyme.com/intr/int-21.htm

DOS kernel interrupts by name:

http://www.ctyme.com/intr/cat-010.htm

# Ralf Brown's Interrupt List

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#15
Yeah well I think it has been proven that Gates was more style than substance and some of the choices he made early in the DOS wars were at the expense of others like Kildall. He was able to take a something that was not technically superior (copied or not) and beat his competition (DOS 6.22 anyone?). So yes he is a "good" capitalist but his 31337 skills are sh!t, he was never a tech genius.

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#16
> He did, however, find at least 22 system calls — the types of actions that send/receive text from a printer, phone, hard disk, etc. — that had the same function (and function number) as the CP/M code.

Older programmers: what are function numbers? Thanks.

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#17
post #11

Some context from the QDOS wiki posted below > Controversy has continued to surround the similarity between the two systems. Perhaps the most sensational claim comes from Jerry Pournelle, who claims that Kildall personally demonstrated to him that DOS contained CP/M code by entering a command in DOS that displayed Kildall's name; as of 2006 Pournelle has not revealed the command and nobody has come forward to corrobo…

Kildall never explicitly claimed that MSDOS copied CP/M's code.

There are just repeated claims that "MSDOS infringed on CP/M's copyrights" and based on all reverse engineering efforts and the lack of an actual lawsuit, we can safely assume Kindall is not using a legally valid definition of "copyrights".

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#18

DOS has been so thoroughly analysed, reverse engineered, examined and hex dumped by very very smart people that if such a function existed it would have been detected LONG LONG ago. There is no such function.

(the function being referred to in the comment above is the one that allegedly prints Kildall's name)

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#19
post #16

> He did, however, find at least 22 system calls — the types of actions that send/receive text from a printer, phone, hard disk, etc. — that had the same function (and function number) as the CP/M code. Older programmers: what are function numbers? Thanks.

My guess is they are referring to software interrupt numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_API#Interrupt_vectors_u...

In my opinion it's unsurprising that they would be the same as in CP/M.

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#20
post #9

How is it possible to not find the Kildall function if it's there? Isnt it a pretty tiny haystack for today's standards?

If it were there, you'd have to assume that Bob Zeidman would have found it. He's spent enough time looking. He therefore feels safe in offering $200,000 for it, which makes the whole thing look like more of a publicity stunt....

If he really wanted the truth, he would offer $100,000 to anyone who could prove the existence of the Kildall command in CP/M.

Once we know what it is, we can easily prove if the command does or doesn't exist in MSDOS.

Post reply on HN