Every enterprise has it's secret sauce, even my grand mother. And those secret sauces tend to have an expiry date. That is why ID can open source thier old game engines, knowing that the world will still pay money for the newer, shinnier, faster stuff.
Parallax could probably open source everything they ever did, up to the Propeller chip design, without any bad repurcussions. No one is going to bother to try and take their business by copying that stuff now.
haha saying the guys name wrong, thanks for the link, give me some credit how many people in there 20s even know who gary is .
I was just thinking it would be super cool to build a z80/prop combo like the apple1 kit buy briel. The reason to do this would be to run cp/m or xenix to bad xenix was never OS, I wonder how hard it would be to get a copy.
rwgast: See ZiCog - been done... emulates a Z80 and runs CPM on RamBlade, TriBlade & DracBlade!
It was always said "The job ain't done till Lotus won't run" meaning that MS OS was written so that the competitions spreadsheet (Lotus) to MS Excel would break.
I always wished that Apple had/will open up their OS to run on clone hardware - they could even license the clone hardware. Their OS was far better than the Windoze knock-off. Remember, MS had access to Apple's source on the mac.
Now, I used and recommended Windoze to my customers because what they needed was an OS that ran certain software. Mac just didn't have the apps available and neither did *nix. So, it was a commercial decision. Linux and flavours still has an underlying nerdieness required to get it operational and keep it there - this is unfortunate, but its reality.
As for home servers, apart from the NAS drives which are great, simple and cheap, there is a new flavour coming in the form of these tiny SBCs that are ARM based and run *nix. The Raspberry Pi is just the start of this real revolution. The MK802 is another - I just picked up a MK802 II for A$51 on eBay a few days ago - an ARM Cortex-8 (allwinner A10) with graphics CPU, 1GHz, 1GB DDR3, WiFi 3xUSB, microSD, HDMI, in a usb style dongle. Just watch these items drop in price due to volume, and what they get used on!
Thomas Edison really made a great invention in the light bulb, but if you read his biography you will find out that his really profound move was to take all his new wealth and to hire as much of the competition that he could and have them product patents under his name for General Electric.
Microsoft didn't even bother with the first phase, but they certainly copied Edison's approach to new found technological wealth.
Frankly, I think the days of the boy genius are over. It is getting nigh on impossible to build anything in a garage of real significance. And there will likely be a bevy of lawyers to shout down and claims of originality...........
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Funny thing is I can recall hearing similar comments around the time the first microprocessors (4004, 8008 era) were hitting the market. While it is definitely more difficult it is still possible. It just takes coming up with the right idea at the right time.
Oh im well aware of ZiCog, I guess I just meant it would be a cool project to get an acuall z80 chip interfaced with the prop like the apple1 clone. So essentialy you basically have a real z80 board with dram, but the propeller is used to take care of most of the perephrials. Then get a copy of xenix working on it..
As far Apple what is the breil apple clone running? I thought woz had released the apple1/2 rom. Or did you mean you wish you would have been able to run the apple os on a 6502 clone board 20/25 years ago? Wow that makes me feel a bit old printing banners in grade school on the apple 2 I cant belive the apple 2 is running close to 30 years old now!
A Z80 interfaced to the Prop as you describe was exactly what I had in mind when I discovered the Propeller. Then I got side tracked into emulating the whole thing on the Prop.
Anyway there is a nice DIY Z80 computer project called N8VEM. If you look at what they have done you will find a Propeller being used for peripherals as an option for that design.
Every enterprise has it's secret sauce, even my grand mother. And those secret sauces tend to have an expiry date. That is why ID can open source thier old game engines, knowing that the world will still pay money for the newer, shinnier, faster stuff.
Parallax could probably open source everything they ever did, up to the Propeller chip design, without any bad repurcussions. No one is going to bother to try and take their business by copying that stuff now.
Actually we have copyrights, trade marks, and patents that are protected by public disclosure.
But every company has the right to protect themselves by trade secrets as Coca-cola does. There is NO expiry date on trade secrets, just the risk that another company will effectively copy it and once the secret is no longer there is no legal defense of ownership.
In other words, your grandmother's secret sauce has NO expiry date.
It appears that Parallax has protected PBasic as a trade secret, but I am not sure - they may have a copyright on the tokens. The reason it is hard to say is that they have kept up enforcement against illegal product by only producing the Basic Stamp at one location. Those that have copied it were likely caught in a trademark issue as they had no proof of purchase from Parallax as the source.
And trade marks do not expire.
I have no problem with these protection schemes in principle. But when aggressive corporations and lawyers start to harass on the basis that wealth can bend the rules, it stinks.
Comments
Every enterprise has it's secret sauce, even my grand mother. And those secret sauces tend to have an expiry date. That is why ID can open source thier old game engines, knowing that the world will still pay money for the newer, shinnier, faster stuff.
Parallax could probably open source everything they ever did, up to the Propeller chip design, without any bad repurcussions. No one is going to bother to try and take their business by copying that stuff now.
Well, you can read about it at the Digital Research website: Recollections of Gary Kildall
I was just thinking it would be super cool to build a z80/prop combo like the apple1 kit buy briel. The reason to do this would be to run cp/m or xenix to bad xenix was never OS, I wonder how hard it would be to get a copy.
Fire in the Valley
Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire
Triumph of the Nerds (1996 PBS video)
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
I wouldn't buy any of them new but if you can find a cheap used copy or maybe check a local library, they're all worth reading.
rebel code
linux: just for fun
masters of doom
and iWoz THIS IS A GREAT BOOK especially to those of us here so insperational
It was always said "The job ain't done till Lotus won't run" meaning that MS OS was written so that the competitions spreadsheet (Lotus) to MS Excel would break.
I always wished that Apple had/will open up their OS to run on clone hardware - they could even license the clone hardware. Their OS was far better than the Windoze knock-off. Remember, MS had access to Apple's source on the mac.
Now, I used and recommended Windoze to my customers because what they needed was an OS that ran certain software. Mac just didn't have the apps available and neither did *nix. So, it was a commercial decision. Linux and flavours still has an underlying nerdieness required to get it operational and keep it there - this is unfortunate, but its reality.
As for home servers, apart from the NAS drives which are great, simple and cheap, there is a new flavour coming in the form of these tiny SBCs that are ARM based and run *nix. The Raspberry Pi is just the start of this real revolution. The MK802 is another - I just picked up a MK802 II for A$51 on eBay a few days ago - an ARM Cortex-8 (allwinner A10) with graphics CPU, 1GHz, 1GB DDR3, WiFi 3xUSB, microSD, HDMI, in a usb style dongle. Just watch these items drop in price due to volume, and what they get used on!
Funny thing is I can recall hearing similar comments around the time the first microprocessors (4004, 8008 era) were hitting the market. While it is definitely more difficult it is still possible. It just takes coming up with the right idea at the right time.
As far Apple what is the breil apple clone running? I thought woz had released the apple1/2 rom. Or did you mean you wish you would have been able to run the apple os on a 6502 clone board 20/25 years ago? Wow that makes me feel a bit old printing banners in grade school on the apple 2 I cant belive the apple 2 is running close to 30 years old now!
A Z80 interfaced to the Prop as you describe was exactly what I had in mind when I discovered the Propeller. Then I got side tracked into emulating the whole thing on the Prop.
Anyway there is a nice DIY Z80 computer project called N8VEM. If you look at what they have done you will find a Propeller being used for peripherals as an option for that design.
http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/w/page/4200908/FrontPage
Actually we have copyrights, trade marks, and patents that are protected by public disclosure.
But every company has the right to protect themselves by trade secrets as Coca-cola does. There is NO expiry date on trade secrets, just the risk that another company will effectively copy it and once the secret is no longer there is no legal defense of ownership.
In other words, your grandmother's secret sauce has NO expiry date.
It appears that Parallax has protected PBasic as a trade secret, but I am not sure - they may have a copyright on the tokens. The reason it is hard to say is that they have kept up enforcement against illegal product by only producing the Basic Stamp at one location. Those that have copied it were likely caught in a trademark issue as they had no proof of purchase from Parallax as the source.
And trade marks do not expire.
I have no problem with these protection schemes in principle. But when aggressive corporations and lawyers start to harass on the basis that wealth can bend the rules, it stinks.