[X4U] Windows on Mac Fact

[Stroller]

I noticed your reply whilst myself looking for references with which  
to dispute Mr Robertson's statements, however I'm inclined to  
disagree with you over your attribution of the credit to Compaq.

A number of other people also make this attribution, and Googling  
isn't immediately able to offer me a definitive answer. I prefer this  
explanation by Paul D. Cook, however, which seems to concur with my  
beliefs:

    Mitch Stone is quite right to call the "opening" of the IBM PC
    architecture an urban myth. IBM clearly had no intention of doing
    so. IBM successfully used litigation techniques to shut down a
    number of early PC cloners.

    However, it is Phoenix and Lloyd's of London, not Compaq, which
    deserves the credit for first making PC clones possible.

    Prior to Phoenix, IBM threw the weight of their enormous legal
    muscle against anyone who cloned the BIOS in their PC. Phoenix did
    a clean room design. None of the programmers working on the Phoenix
    BIOS had ever seen the IBM PC BIOS. In fact, Phoenix went out of
    their way to hire programmers who had never even worked on the
    8088/8086 processor chips used in early IBM PCs.

    But that alone might not have sufficed. IBM could have tied them
    up in legal restraining orders, etc. and watched them go bankrupt
    while the case inched its way through the US court system.

    The real genius, was the Phoenix had a huge legal insurance policy
    through Lloyd's of London. This gave Phoenix the ability to survive
    such an attack. As a result IBM didn't sue Phoenix and once the
    proverbial cat was out of the bag, they didn't sue most other BIOS
    clone produces unless they were outright copies.

    Of course Gates and Microsoft were right there eager to sell DOS
    and Basic to any clone maker who had an interest.

    Compaq deserves the credit for taking PC clone leadership away from
    IBM by introducing the first 80386 based PC. This was the first 32
    bit capable PC. Of course PC's continued to fight with 32-bit clean
    code issues for years to come.

I wasn't aware of the Lloyds angle, and it may well be that IBM  
litigated against Compaq's use of the BIOS for political reasons.  
There's a lot of discussion of this at http://www.macintouch.com/ 
pchistory.html and I post in case others find this as interesting as  
I do.

Stroller.



On 14 Jan 2006, at 16:38, Aron Spencer wrote:
>
> No they didn't. They just misunderestimated the difficulty of  
> cloning it. There were lawsuits over the first (compaq) clones, and  
> the cloners had to show that they were created in a "clean"  
> environment, with no access to BIOS code, just duplication of  
> functionality.
>
> On Jan 14, 2006, at 8:13 AM, Jim Robertson wrote:
>
>>  Part of what made the PC engulf
>> the Mac in marketshare was the fact that IBM told anyone who  
>> listened how to
>> make BIOS and welcomed them to do so.