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Authored by: greed on Friday, May 25 2012 @ 11:37 PM EDT |
IBM still has the Open32 Redbook up:
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg244719.html
(That's the abstract, the PDF proper is 300 pages.)
I cannot provide a link to confirm that IBM only had a source license for the
16-bit Windows code, not the Win32 code.
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Authored by: bugstomper on Saturday, May 26 2012 @ 06:04 PM EDT |
Not being a legal type I would not know how to find the most relevant court
decision - Maybe this one is better referenced in wherever this ended up in
appellate court. But this may be a start. Here is a link that a Google search
found that is a findings of fact in the antitrust case against Microsoft when it
was at the US District Court for D.C.
Findings of Fact ,
bold emphasis added by me to show where the court assumes that such
copying is possible and was attempted by IBM, without mentioning
infringement
a. OS/2 Warp
46. IBM's
inability to gain widespread developer support for its OS/2 Warp operating
system illustrates how the massive Windows installed base makes it prohibitively
costly for a rival operating system to attract enough developer support to
challenge Windows. In late 1994, IBM introduced its Intel-compatible OS/2 Warp
operating system and spent tens of millions of dollars in an effort to attract
ISVs to develop applications for OS/2 and in an attempt to reverse-engineer,
or "clone," part of the Windows API set. Despite these efforts, IBM could
obtain neither significant market share nor ISV support for OS/2 Warp. Thus,
although at its peak OS/2 ran approximately 2,500 applications and had 10% of
the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems, IBM ultimately determined
that the applications barrier prevented effective competition against Windows
95. For that reason, in 1996 IBM stopped trying to convince ISVs to write for
OS/2 Warp. IBM now targets the product at a market niche, namely enterprise
customers (mainly banks) that are interested in particular types of application
that run on OS/2 Warp. The fact that IBM no longer tries to compete with Windows
is evidenced by the fact that it prices OS/2 Warp at about two-and-one-half
times the price of Windows 98.
[ ... ]
4.
Cloning the 32-Bit Windows APIs
52. Theoretically, the developer of a
non-Microsoft, Intel-compatible PC operating system could circumvent the
applications barrier to entry by cloning the APIs exposed by the 32-bit versions
of Windows (Windows 9x and Windows NT). Applications written for Windows
would then also run on the rival system, and consumers could use the rival
system confident in that knowledge. Translating this theory into practice is
virtually impossible, however. First of all, cloning the thousands of APIs
already exposed by Windows would be an enormously expensive undertaking. More
daunting is the fact that Microsoft continually adds APIs to Windows through
updates and new versions. By the time a rival finished cloning the APIs
currently in existence, Windows would have exposed a multitude of new ones.
Since the rival would never catch up, it would never be able to assure consumers
that its operating system would run all of the applications written for Windows.
IBM discovered this to its dismay in the mid-1990s when it failed, despite a
massive investment, to clone a sufficiently large part of the 32-bit Windows
APIs. In short, attempting to clone the 32-bit Windows APIs is such an
expensive, uncertain undertaking that it fails to present a practical option for
a would-be competitor to Windows.
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