Xref: utzoo comp.misc:1894 comp.sys.m68k:750 comp.sys.mac:12509 comp.sys.ibm.pc:11760
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!mandrill!neoucom!wtm
From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.sys.m68k,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: The New Chips
Summary: qdos --> msdos
Keywords: Intel IBM
Message-ID: <1008@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: 14 Feb 88 00:54:09 GMT
References: <4746@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1430@husc2.UUCP> <4227@utai.UUCP> <9498@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 29


Accoding to some stuff I read recently, Microsoft bought the
right to market qdos from Seattle Computer Products at the time
that Microsoft was courted by IBM.  At the time, the story has it,
qdos was one of the few operating system products that would run on
the 8086/8088.  Digital Research made the unfortunate mistake of
snubbing IBM, and Bill Gates had the great fortune and business
acumen to be in the right place at the right time to win the IBM
contract.

Qdos eventually became IBM's DOS 1.0.  It really was a pretty
terrible operating system, that was not really much different form
CP/M.  1.0 didn't even have a heirachical file structure.  After
Microsoft picked up qdos, they did the further development to add
the heirarchical file system and all the goodies that we know and
love/hate now.

There was recently a law suit were Microsoft and SCP locked horns
about who actually owned the rights to the current version of DOS /
MS-DOS.  SCP argued that they had retained rights to sell all
future versions of DOS.  Microsoft argued that Microsoft had
expended great effort to improve the current releases of DOS and
that the current releases were virtually different products,
bearing only minor resemblance to version 1.0.  I don't know how
the suit turned out; I'd guess that Microsoft won, if not on moral
grounds, at least on the fact they have more lawyers and $$$ than
SCP.

--Bill