Quote from bwolinsky:
You are pretty stupid for saying Microsoft is not innovative. They made the PC possible. Operating Systems were needed even before software could be developed. You're mental for thinking that's not an innovation, and was not copied by anyone.
Microsoft did not invent the operating system, by any means. Windows, that's a joke right?
So 86-DOS, CP/M and Xerox had no influence on MS whatsoever? hmmm
>Bill gates did not innovate anything for MS.
Microsoft's original OS DOS was 86-DOS created by Seattle Computer Products. Microsoft bought out the rights to the OS, that is some real "innovation".
Microsoft then created a gui for the system, Let's discuss the gui, the first was featured on the Xerox Alto OS. Xerox then introduced the Star, which then was copied and fitted by both Apple and then MS.
Microsoft become wealthy through its licensing strategy and its right to sell pc, to companies other than IBM, that was fatal mistake for IBM. MS then created tons of code built on top of the original DOS, so that programs would continue to function with each new version of Windows. Microsoft copies other people's software and incorporates to Windows. MS still uses the same NTFS file system.
Microsoft then created an office suite, which had features copied from Lotus 1-2-3 and Word Perfect office software and then offered bundled discounts to oems for essentially the same software MS office.
Microsoft's browser IE was based on Mosaic, their founders then founded Netscape. Microsoft copied features from the browser and only supported at a minimum what Netscape supported to stay relevant and bundled it with the OS, while giving discounts to oems. Microsoft did not add any new features to IE essentially until Mozilla Firefox become a considerable in the browser market a couple years ago. Directx was a modified copy originally of Opengl.
All that Microsoft has built up from DOS-windows-explorer is built into vista and now 7
.NET is copying java, visual studio copied the developer IDE from those previously created at Borland and sqlserver is just an RDBMS like oracle, DB2 etc
Xbox (a pet project) is simply another game console, zune another mp3 player, WinMo, MSN (default IE homepage) etc and all are second or third rate competitors
Not to mention webtv, zune, SPoT, Encarta, msn search, Live Search, PlaysForSure and many others which have all failed.
All MS can do is suck the public dry with their monopoly and anti-competitive oem practices, and blow some of their excess profits on Ad campaigns that are irrelevant anyway.
All of Microsoft's innovation was previously created by other corporations, Microsoft just took the same principles and features present in that other software/embedded devices/hardware and rebranded it and filed patents and copyrights. The windows tcp/ip comes from BSD, Microsoft then implemented and patented their own version.
Software patents exist because lawyers figured out a way around the rules, by describing the computing device within the patent, Microsoft creates new lines of code to add on to previously made products like Windows, Office and IE for example, while only on occasion make significant improvements.
Those MS patents are for services and products related to MS' crown jewel monopoly (new lines of code and a plethora of other products that have failed or are essentially theoretical proprietary implementation's from other companies that have actually innovated.
