
Did Bill Gates Steal the Heart of DOS? - ukdm
http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/did-bill-gates-steal-the-heart-of-dos/0
======
gaius
This is just an advertorial for CodeSuite. Srsly, there was "no way" to
compare them until now, we read, then further down the page we read his
methodology: download the easily available source code to both from the web,
and search them for common strings.

 _My guess: “Comerr” was a routine that handles either communication errors or
command errors_

When this guy encounters "foo" and "bar" his head will explode.

I expect better from IEEE, this is not even at the level of TechCrunch!

~~~
nathell
_I used a utility program developed at SAFE to extract strings of text from
binary files._

man strings # strings, man!

~~~
wladimir
strings is a very neat utility. I only recently discovered it can even extract
16-bit little endian (Windows unicode) strings by passing `-el`.

------
Tloewald
I was never under the impression that MS-DOS (QDOS) was literally stolen from
DRI, but that QDOS was a clone of CP/M back in an era when software copyright
wasn't clear. Microsoft licensed QDOS but didn't buy it outright, and later
made a deal with DRI to cover its ass. Both the original developer of QDOS and
DRI ended up with the rights to sell DOS products. (As did IBM.)

Years later, DRI was selling its own version of DOS (DR-DOS) which was widely
considered technically superior to MS-DOS or PC-DOS (e.g. At one point it
supported preemptive multitasking and could also run Windows 3.x iirc.)

The real "theft" was that when the original developer of QDOS went bankrupt,
its mos valuable asset was its DOS license. But when it tried to sell it
Microsoft sued and forced the owner to sell the license to Microsoft for a
very low figure. Meanwhile, DR-DOS was killed using a combination of
deliberate incompatibilities and eventually Windows 95.

I never used DR-DOS, but I remember greatly preferring PC-DOS to MS-DOS
because the default text editor was so much nicer.

The fact the article makes zero mention of DR-DOS is a bit puzzling.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS>

------
Zenst
I actualy saw the source code for MS-DOS (IBM in the early days shipped PC-DOS
branded version and non IBM kit could buy MS-DOS). I can't recall if it was
version 4.x or 5.x (think it was 4.x) and the only thing that struck me was
the use of some Sun boot loading code without any visable (c) signs in
comments apart from soemthing along the lines "This is from Sun for boot
loader to work...".

But history does have its ability to make things unclear over time so can see
why people argue about 2000 year old books, let alone software in our own
lifetimes.

Only thing I feel sad about is that OS/2 was not open sourced 10 years ago.

Still in another 10 years or so people will be writting stories about how
Linux was a rip of from Minix and other historical things without any hope of
changing the past.

RIP Gary Kildall.

~~~
andrewf
My unqualified guess: something to do with the Sun386i, an x86 Sun workstation
which ran a port of SunOS and could virtualise MS-DOS.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun386i>

~~~
Zenst
You may very well be right, though I would of expected some (c) signs in the
source (assembler). Sadly I don't have access to those sources any more, so I
won't be able to verify it. Also more I think about it the more I believe it
was 4.x I saw and that with what you pointed out about Sun may very well be
the case, especialy given the additions to volume ID'd (more than one disc)
being added for that version.

One day the source may officialy be publicly available and that will be a
interesting day. That said it does appear as if the 6.x source code was leaked
and illegaly available from a quick google, but that's another story.

------
vm
tl;dr Nope. Bill Gates checks out fine. Gary Kildall's claim of DOS theft
could not be supported by modern software forensics.

------
tylermenezes
[Dupe of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4337902>]

------
quarterto
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines> strikes again.

EDIT: keep forgetting HN comments aren't Markdown.

------
Monkeyget
It appears that he looked for string similarity in the source and binaries.
Another, and imho better, way to find code plagiarism is to build the call
graph of the programs and perform graph isomoprhism to detect similarities. It
is much harder to conceal plagiarism from that sort of analysis.

