can anyone remember...?

[miriam_e]

Years back Microsoft destroyed a company that produced a much improved command line for MSWindows. It was a drop-in replacement for DOS, and gave users much greater functionality. Microsoft saw it as a competitor and deliberately destroyed it by adding fake error messages into Windows. Running processes were checked to see if they used the "competitor" DOS, in which case Windows would put up a fake error message. Some years ago a computer magazine actually published the code in MSWindows which did this bit of nastiness. (I still have it somewhere.)

Can anybody remember what the name of that DOS was?

---

Found it: DR-DOS, by Digital Research.

Read this:
http://www.kickassgear.com/Articles/Microsoft.htm
to get an idea of the depths of deception they indulged in. It features internal emails from Microsoft on how they lied to their customers and set about destroying the superior DR-DOS.

This one shows how Microsoft views their customers with disgust, considering crashing people's computers if they tried to install DR-DOS and to confuse people with legalistic FUD.
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9808&L=list310&P=2052

Comments

[gothxxangel.livejournal.com]

Oh sheesh--Microsoft. Why does this not surprise me?

In a strange way it kind of reminds me of the Wright brothers' taking out a patent on any kind of flying machine after they invented theirs and thus delayed the advancement of flight technology.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Weird thing is there were a lot of people around the world building flying machines at the time the Wright brothers did their stuff. A number of times the brothers were stumped and were helped by other people who had solved a number of the problems earlier. The first guy to successfully build a flying machine was a New Zealander (can't remember his name off-hand). There was another guy, an Australian, who built his own machine and flew it, who shared info with the Wright brothers. Yet history remembers the ones who stomped on the competition instead of the fact that it was a worldwide collective effort.

I like to think that is changing.