The alternative (of an entirely incompatible hardware evolution) would have been much more suicidal though. The whole point of computer hardware is to run softw

The alternative (of an entirely incompatible hardware evolution) would have been much more suicidal though. The whole point of computer hardware is to run software (and mostly quite boring office or some process-controller software). And by cloning the hardware you save the software development cost (e.g. most East German productivity software were pirated copies with the trademark strings sloppily replaced).