3 ms·

While IV may or may not be scumbags, I highly doubt they were involved here (as I said elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9439950 https://news.ycom

While IV may or may not be scumbags, I highly doubt they were involved here (as I said elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9439950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9439950) Joe Mullin has notoriously poor understanding of patents (and I'm being charitable here, else I'd say he writes deliberately misleading language to pander to these types of crowds - his earlier work certainly betrays a more nuanced understanding of patents). Acquiring patents from somebody does not make you a shell company of theirs. The types of shell companies these entities use exist literally only on paper. Apart from their IP assets (which also exist only on paper), the only thing they have is a PO box, which they share with thousands others. They have no offices and no employees, let alone a website. On the topic of Bill Gates, he literally enabled the computer revolution. Without Microsoft, we'd be in an industry ruled by hardware makers, each a mini-Apple, with their own walled-garden ecosystems that would not interoperate with any others. It's just that he happened to disagree with the most popular religion around these parts that has earned him the ire he gets.

scott_karana 11y ago
> Without Microsoft, we'd be in an industry ruled by hardware makers, each a mini-Apple, with their own walled-garden ecosystems that would not interoperate with any others Yes, IBM, the incumbent company with the largest market share, definitely tried to start a walled garden. /sarcasm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer
- throwawaykf05 11y ago
  IBM actually came late to the PC (or microcomputers as they were known then) game, but the world it entered was full of walled gardens. However due to its lateness, it was forced to make architectural decisions that made future cloning easy. But you do know that the "IBM PC compatible" clones that made the PC a standard and commoditized hardware were reverse-engineered, right? As in, without IBM's approval? If IBM wanted a truly open system, people would not have had to reverse the BIOS. Microsoft's masterstroke was in foregoing exclusive licensing to IBM for lower royalties, and then making the same software available on all computers, thereby creating a standard platform that more software could be written for. The true value of a machine is in the software, and as more and more software is written, more and more value is created (which MS was perfectly positioned to capture a large chunk of), whereas hardware becomes fungible, causing hardware makers to enter a race to the bottom. This made hardware cheaper and more accessible, leading to even more software being created. I doubt any other company drove that shift as much as MS did. Certainly not IBM, which didn't even realize what was happening at the time, and if it did, it certainly would have fought its own commoditization.

scott_karana 11y ago

> Without Microsoft, we'd be in an industry ruled by hardware makers, each a mini-Apple, with their own walled-garden ecosystems that would not interoperate with any others Yes, IBM, the incumbent company with the largest market share, definitely tried to start a walled garden. /sarcasm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer

throwawaykf05 11y ago
IBM actually came late to the PC (or microcomputers as they were known then) game, but the world it entered was full of walled gardens. However due to its lateness, it was forced to make architectural decisions that made future cloning easy. But you do know that the "IBM PC compatible" clones that made the PC a standard and commoditized hardware were reverse-engineered, right? As in, without IBM's approval? If IBM wanted a truly open system, people would not have had to reverse the BIOS. Microsoft's masterstroke was in foregoing exclusive licensing to IBM for lower royalties, and then making the same software available on all computers, thereby creating a standard platform that more software could be written for. The true value of a machine is in the software, and as more and more software is written, more and more value is created (which MS was perfectly positioned to capture a large chunk of), whereas hardware becomes fungible, causing hardware makers to enter a race to the bottom. This made hardware cheaper and more accessible, leading to even more software being created. I doubt any other company drove that shift as much as MS did. Certainly not IBM, which didn't even realize what was happening at the time, and if it did, it certainly would have fought its own commoditization.