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CP/M creator Gary Kildall's memoirs released as free download

(spectrum.ieee.org)
244 points rbanffy | 3 comments | 18 Jul 25 10:22 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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pavlov ◴[18 Jul 25 12:12 UTC] No.44603830[source]▶
"“Our father, Gary Kildall, was one of the founders of the personal computer industry, but you probably don’t know his name. Those who have heard of him may recall the myth that he ‘missed’ the opportunity to become Bill Gates by going flying instead of meeting with IBM. Unfortunately, this tall tale paints Gary as a ‘could-have-been,’ ignores his deep contributions, and overshadows his role as an inventor of key technologies that define how computer platforms run today.

"Gary viewed computers as learning tools rather than profit engines. His career choices reflect a different definition of success, where innovation means sharing ideas, letting passion drive your work and making source code available for others to build upon. His work ethic during the 1970s resembles that of the open-source community today.

"With this perspective, we offer a portion of our father’s unpublished memoirs so that you can read about his experiences and reflections on the early days of the computer industry, directly in his own voice."

Sounds really interesting. Thanks for making this available!

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elzbardico ◴[18 Jul 25 14:46 UTC] No.44605235[source]▶
Let's be frank. Gates was from the WASP elites, old money stuff. IBM would probably find a reason to give him the deal rather than to Gary no matter what.
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acdha ◴[18 Jul 25 14:51 UTC] No.44605296[source]▶
In particular, his mother – Mary Maxwell Gates – was on the United Way board along with IBM’s chairman John Opel and reportedly discussed her son’s company with Opel a few weeks before they made the decision to license MS-DOS.

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/obituaries/mary-gates-64-...

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WalterBright ◴[18 Jul 25 16:10 UTC] No.44606388[source]▶
There's little doubt that Ms Gates suggested that IBM look into Bill Gates, but I seriously doubt that IBM made the major business decision to contract with Gates because of his mother's suggestion.
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acdha ◴[18 Jul 25 17:32 UTC] No.44607549[source]▶
None of us know what was said but I have no reason to doubt it based on the reports of his subsequent conversations with lower-level IBM executives. It probably didn’t seem like an especially consequential decision both because neither Gates nor Kildall were especially proven at that time by the standards of a Goliath like IBM and the mainframe guys were notoriously dismissive of PCs (Opel came up through S/360). I’ve seen enough nepotism not to question the plausibility but it’s especially easy to imagine people high up the management ladder at the biggest mainframe manufacturer thinking it didn’t really matter which of the toy computer operating system vendors they picked. I didn’t work in that world then (that was my dad’s generation) but even in the mid-90s when I started working in tech it was not uncommon to find mainframe people who were dismissive of PC or Unix systems as non-serious.
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WalterBright ◴[18 Jul 25 18:26 UTC] No.44608178[source]▶
Ms Gates wasn't on the board of IBM, she was on the board of another company. That isn't nepotism.

There is no way successful IBM would commit to Microsoft without a thorough vetting.

Few remember, but IBM also sold CPM/86 for the PC. Kildall had his chance, and muffed it with the high price.

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jen20 ◴[18 Jul 25 19:39 UTC] No.44608942{5}[source]▶
> There is no way successful IBM would commit to Microsoft without a thorough vetting.

As I recall, at the time said commitment was made, Microsoft didn't even _have_ an operating system, and subsequently bought QDOS! Their original deal was for languages.

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1. WalterBright ◴[18 Jul 25 19:49 UTC] No.44609038{6}[source]▶
Gates convinced IBM that he could build one, as he knew about QDOS, and immediately went and bought QDOS as a base to start with. So, yeah, it was a bit of bluster on his part, but he was able to fulfill the contract.
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2. wpollock ◴[19 Jul 25 01:53 UTC] No.44611844[source]▶
It wasn't a "base to start with". MS Dos was QDOS. I was a summer intern in the early 1980s with IBM in Kingston, NY, and had access to the source. Gates didn't even bother to remove the SCP copyright notice from the comments, nor the references to QDOS. Too bad "sed" and "awk" weren't available for search and replace back then.
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3. canucker2016 ◴[19 Jul 25 03:45 UTC] No.44612415[source]▶
Much of the remaining QDOS/PCDOS work was probably adapting to the IBM BIOS.

from Tim Paterson's website, https://web.archive.org/web/20190722012644/http://www.paters...

  ...In May, he went to Microsoft to work full-time on the PC-DOS version of 86-DOS.

  "The first day on the job I walk through the door and 'Hey! It's IBM,' " says Paterson, grinning impishly. "I worked at Microsoft a neat eleven months. In May, June, and July I worked on things I hadn't quite finished, refining PC-DOS."

  International Business Machinations.

  This was the beginning of an eleven-month hurricane. Almost daily, Paterson shipped stuff to Boca Raton for IBM's approval, and IBM would instantly return comments, modifications, and more problems.

  "They were real thorough. I would send them a disk the same day via Delta Dash. IBM would be on the phone to me as soon as the disk arrived." Paterson pauses and winds up. He's remembering one request that clashed violently with his view of the project.

  "IBM wanted CP/M prompts. It made me throw up." But when IBM asks, you comply if you're a lowly programmer, and that is what Paterson did.

  He finished PC-DOS in July, one month before the pc was officially announced to the world. By this time, 86-DOS had become MS-DOS.