las@apr.UUCP (Larry Shurr) (09/16/87)
In article <965@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: >Phillip Burton suggests that the quick death of CP/M, in spite of >it's position as the OS for most applications software in 1981, fortells >a similar fate for Unix... >I think the situations here are quite a bit different for several reasons: > 1) The PC software that dominated was quite a bit better than the > CP/M software... > 2) The Unix software base is considerably larger and more widely used > than the CP/M software base was... > 3) Unix is supported by AT&T... > Compare this with Digital Research, who were unable to support > CP/M enough to get IBM to bless it the way they did MS-DOS. > 4) Unix is also supported, in the Xenix variant, by Microsoft... > 5) Software today is written more portably... > 6) (linked of 5) Many companies actually do their DOS development on > Unix already... 7) (link to 3) There was a large discrepancy in price between PC-DOS and CP/M-86. Remember? DOS listed at $65 (I think), CP/M listed for $245. Although CP/M-86 offered more features than DOS 1.x, it was not clearly a better value (which would you have chosen?). Later, DR offered CP/M at a lower price, but IBM, TI, and other vendors could not due to contractual agreements with DR, there- fore alienating said vendors whose sales were already heavily biased towards DOS, anyway (you go where the market is). I'm not sure that DR's ability or lack of ability to support was the principle problem, in fact, I think they were probably capable of offering adequate support. Gary Kildall's seeming hubris may have been more of a problem. Publicly, he predicted that DOS would fade in favor of CP/M. As we know, this did not occur. Even if you think that DOS 2.x & 3.x are even more horrible kludges than 1.x (I could make a case for this assertion), it did at least evolve in the directions people seemed to want. DR's acknowledgement of this comes in the form of Concurrent PC-DOS, where they cleverly tried to co-opt the DOS market. Perhaps unfortunately, this did not regain control of the small computer O.S. market for DR. regards, Larry -- "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." - Oscar Wilde, James Whistler or George Bernard Shaw depending on who you ask Name: Larry A. Shurr (cbosgd!osu-cis!apr!las or try {cbosgd,ihnp4}!cbcp1!las)