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I would argue that IBM failed with the BIOS, since they assumed nobody could make a compatible machine without their authorization since they controlled the BIO

by ryao 1y ago

I would argue that IBM failed with the BIOS, since they assumed nobody could make a compatible machine without their authorization since they controlled the BIOS and the idea of a clean room reimplementation never dawned on them. It did dawn on Compaq. MCA came afterward.

musicale 1y ago
> they assumed nobody could make a compatible machine without their authorization since they controlled the BIOS and the idea of a clean room reimplementation never dawned on them So you're saying that they were somehow unaware of how new BIOS implementations were used in CP/M to port it to new systems? And that they distributed the BIOS source code with every IBM PC... to make it harder for competitors to build compatible machines due to copyright claims? And that they were somehow unaware DOS had largely reimplemented the CP/M design and API? (Though DOS's FAT filesystem was a successor to FAT8 from Microsoft's Disk BASIC rather than CP/M's filesystem.)
- deleted 1y ago
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- ryao 1y ago
  Your use of straw man arguments in response to a straightforward historical description is both inappropriate and condescending. You may think IBM’s executives were naïve, but that does not change the actual history of the IBM PC. IBM prioritized time-to-market by using off-the-shelf components and assumed their control of the BIOS would prevent compatible clones. That assumption was proven wrong when Compaq successfully did a clean-room implementation of the PC BIOS, without violating IBM’s IP. This is a well-documented part of computing history.