> lost progress

Actually, MS-DOS was the first more or less standardized platform across diverse computers, which enabled software developers to develop for a market several orders of magnitude larger than what had existed before. The result was an explosion of software being developed.

I don't see how this retarded progress.

Both CP/M and MS-DOS enabled portable code that runs on various hardware, but devs wrote software that required PC-compatible hardware anyway because sometimes it was a lot faster to bypass the OS.

MS got market share by being cheaper, and once the network effect was in their favor they kept it by threatening OEMs who dared sell anything else to willing customers.

CP/M and MS-DOS weren't really an 'operating system' in the sense that they didn't mediate application access to system resources. They didn't let two apps share even fundamental devices like the clock, timer interrupts, networks, serial ports and on and on. In fact they didn't support multiple apps much at all.

I would call both of them 'monitors' or something. Operating System is way to ambitious a name for what they did.

The FDA, CDC, American Government, and Patent System, have all crippled progress far more than Bill Gates or Microsoft ever did.

That he is not literally Hitler is a pretty damning complement.

(CDC? Really?)

How is that germain?

THREAD OF CONVERSATION: Bill Gates is a murderer!

PHILLIP HAYDRON: Jeffrey Dahmer has murdered far more than he ever did!

SCO

That's debatable.

Then debate it, I'm interested in your perspective. Saying "that's debatable" adds nothing to the conversation and essentially means "I don't agree".

In the sense that everything is debatable, yes.

Tu quoque?