It's true about the VMS = NT thing. I ran VMS systems for years, and
    it never ceases to amaze me how much of VMS appears in
    NT/2000/XP. Even the pagefile has the exact same name.

That's standard geek humor, though, and doesn't mean anything about whether
code was actually copied or not.  For instance, the cisco IOS operating
system source has file and function names that are "the same" as the DEC
tops20 operating system, because no few of the early cisco software
engineers were former DEC20 programmers.  Of course, the DEC code was
assembler, and the cisco code is C, so aside from a concept here and there,
not much was copied other than the names.  (Still, I sent out an April-1
joke "cisco licenses tops20 from DEC" some years ago, and had quite a few
people who appeared to believe it...)

I think fundamentally Microsoft is hated because they're held by the public
to be a major instance of "techie geek success story", but in fact much of
their success is due to marketing prowess (both moral and otherwise.)  Their
products are rarely "the best" technically, and frequenly don't originate
internal to microsoft (ie MSDOS), Microsoft just makes sure that they are
shoved down your throat, and/or eliminates competition.

Particularly obnoxious recent example - microsoft deciding to bow out of the
Macintosh web browser market.

BillW

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