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

(spectrum.ieee.org)
244 points rbanffy | 1 comments | 18 Jul 25 10:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.443s | 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"With this perspective, we offer a portion of our father’s unpublished memoirs so that you can read about his experiences and reflections on the early days of the computer industry, directly in his own voice."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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ChuckMcM ◴[18 Jul 25 18:24 UTC] No.44608148{3}[source]▶
One way to look at it is that if IBM considered licensing MS-DOS and CP/M to be equivalent, which is to say either one would serve there purposes. Then I can easily see the Chairman of IBM putting a finger on the scale to swing it toward Ms. Gates son. It's like a two-fer[1], IBM is going to do a deal anyway and they figure either OS would work, and he gets a 'favor' point from a fellow board member who he might someday need their vote on a board decision down the road. Politics at that level is all about the banking of favors and opportunistically cashing them in.

[1] "Two for one" -- two desirable outcomes from a single action.

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WalterBright ◴[18 Jul 25 18:34 UTC] No.44608255{4}[source]▶
Ms Gates was not on the board of IBM. She was on the board of United Way.
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ChuckMcM ◴[18 Jul 25 18:53 UTC] No.44608432{5}[source]▶
The original comment said they were both on the board of United Way. Those are the votes he'd be curating. United Way, at the time, was the largest non-profit in the United States and it's mission was to funnel donations to "deserving" non-profits. Many companies, including IBM, had a payroll contribution you could make to United Way. The 'service' United Way provided was doing the research to avoid scam charities and non-profits. The old joke "I gave at the office" when a person comes to your door asking for donations, was in reference to giving to United Way and implicitly telling the solicitor that if they wanted a donation to go to United Way and convince them to give some of the donated money to their charity.

As a result, being on the board gave a person tremendous soft power by giving them a direct impact on whether or not they chose to fund a non-profit. The way that expressed would be trips and junkets "for free" for United Way board members as a means of attempting to persuade them to fund a given non-profit. So let's say your kid starts a non-profit and you want other board members to advocate for it being funded. You, as the parent, have a conflict of interest and so must recuse yourself from that decision, but others on the board do not. Having someone in that meeting you can count on to make a solid case for your kids non-profit is worth a lot.

Rich people giving advantages to other rich people is frowned upon as collusion and nepotism, but when you launder that through a giving non-profit and even better you get to use other peoples money, and avoid a whole passel of tax implications. Well who is going to complain that United Way is funding this non-profit versus another? They had so much money to give away it was no doubt easy to hide the less well supported donations from things like the Red Cross or mothers against drunk driving donations.

That's the game at this level.

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canucker2016 ◴[18 Jul 25 19:58 UTC] No.44609122[source]▶
Paul Allen states his version of the IBM selection of OS for their IBM PC in his autobiography, Idea Man.

see my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43591941 for the long version.

Hopefully short version.

IBM went to Microsoft (MS) for languages for the new PC. IBM asked if MS could provide an OS. As per unwritten agreement, MS told IBM to go to Digital Research (DRI) for an OS.

Whatever happened at DRI, IBM didn't get a licensing deal for an OS. No OS meant no need for MS languages. When IBM complained to MS about not getting a licensing agreement for CP/M for IBM PC, one of the MS people suggested Tim Patterson's CP/M clone. IBM was outsourcing everything to keep away the IBM bureaucracy, so they told MS to handle everything.

When MS asked IBM how they wanted to pay for the OS, MS gave several options including 1) per copy royalty, or 2) flat rate (which turned out to be $40K). For easy accounting, IBM chose 2). MS asked to be able to license OS to others. IBM said yes. MS didn't really care about how IBM paid for the OS, their bread and butter was languages. DRI wanted to be paid per copy of CP/M-86.

DRI still didn't have a retail CP/M-86 for IBM PC at launch time. By the time they did ship CP/M-86, charging much more than PC-DOS1.0, Lotus 123 would launch within a few months running on PC-DOS. By the time DRI lowered the price for CP/M-86, they were way behind in market share.

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1. WalterBright ◴[18 Jul 25 21:38 UTC] No.44610113[source]▶
I'd trust Allen for being a credible source.

When IBM returned to MS, Gates decided that opportunity had dropped in his lap again, and this time he wasn't going to turn away from it.