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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Cloning the new IBMs without violating copyrights
Message-ID: <2643@phri.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Apr-87 17:55:59 EST
Article-I.D.: phri.2643
Posted: Thu Apr 23 17:55:59 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Apr-87 19:01:35 EST
References: <766@vaxwaller.UUCP>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 25

In article <766@vaxwaller.UUCP> cw@vaxwaller.UUCP (Carl Weidling) writes:
> Also, it's been suggested that IBM may have put features in the chips that
> they aren't telling anyone about, so that if somebody sweated blood and came
> out with chips that performed the known functions, suddenly IBM would
> announce new capabilities.

	Imagine the following scenario.  Clone Computer Corp sweats blood
as you say and comes up with a machine functionally equivalent to the new
IBM box as we know it today.  CCC starts selling their box for half what
big blue charges.  Big blue cuts their price, and so does CCC.  Both sell
lots of boxes.  Lots of software companies start writing code which runs on
both IBM's box and CCC's.  Then IBM announces "But wait, there's more!  We
didn't tell you this before but that IBM box you bought also can do X!"

	What do the software companies do?  If they take advantage of the
"new" feature, they get a better product which they can sell to the folks
who shelled out double dollars for the authentic IBM box.  On the other
hand, if the pretend that the feature doesn't exist, they get to keep
selling software to all the people who bought clones.  What would you do?
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016

"you can't spell deoxyribonucleic without unix!"