Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Vyre kun, the "R" isnt even close to the "L" to claim you fat fingered the key.

You simply were not "pure" at the time of the writing!

Two separate things. Or actually one and several.

1, Selling a program he didn't have and wasn't going to develop. I admit he did clean it up a bit after acquiring it.

2, Blatantly copying code and hiding behind a wall of lawyers came later and often. He didn't have the wall of lawyers in the early days. I think that tactic peaked around MS DOS 3 - 5.

Gates sold "MS-DOS" when he didn't have it, then went and bought Q-DOS to re-badge it as MS-DOS so he could sell it.

It's not illegal, just unethical. Surprising no one, companies don't give a frak about ethics.

The lawsuits came later when everyone else that did not sell an OS to IBM realised they could have made a whole bunch of money. Too late.

I understand he here as bill gates, the program as CP/M. But what I dont understand is the last bit.

The deal falls through with CP/M so bill gates pivots and successfully acquires all rights to 86-DOS(aka. QDOS) and then develops PC-DOS which is then sold to IBM.

The big "stealing" claims stem from an argument that 86-DOS(aka. QDOS) copied code from CP/M and that DIR's lawyers had forensic proof, yet they never assert their claim beyond that point.

The article I linked early makes the claim in 2012 that there is no evidence that CP/M code could be found in MS-DOS, it does not claim that is true of 86-DOS.

A wise man once said “if youre not cheating, youre not trying”.
He was also a fictional character so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So Chanti are you saying the only way to succeed in a capitalist society is to lie/cheat/steal?

no, I would say she is saying it is the easiest way not the only way. Humans do like the easy way though