The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates 458
theodp writes "BusinessWeek discusses They Made America, a new book which claims Bill Gates got the rewards due Gary Kildall. The book attacks the reputations of key early PC era players - Gates, IBM, and QDOS programmer Tim Paterson - asserting that Paterson copied parts of Kildall's CP/M and that IBM tricked Kildall, allowing Gates to prevail and depriving Kildall of untold riches and credit for a seminal role in the PC revolution. Some material came from an unpublished memoir penned by Kildall after the University of Washington, where Kildall earned a PhD, picked Harvard dropout Gates as keynote speaker for the 25th anniversary of its CS program."
Hey wait a minute (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I could have been Bill Gates! (Score:5, Funny)
Two out of three ain't so bad...
Not entirely untold (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not entirely untold (Score:5, Interesting)
The book was made into a movie [imdb.com] a few years ago, which I believe aired on TNT (if memory serves). I see it is now also available on video.
Re:Not entirely untold (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not entirely untold (Score:3, Informative)
This has actually been discussed at length in other books
Not to mention it was also discussed in Robert X. Cringley's Triumph of the Nerds [pbs.org].
Re:Not entirely untold (Score:3, Informative)
SiO2
Re:Not entirely untold (Score:4, Insightful)
It was a fumble and mismatch of corporate cultures that Bill Gates was quick to take advantage of.
Wrong person (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wrong person (Score:3, Informative)
Bill Gates was a programmer
Sure, he didn't stay up late writing the first versions of Word, Excel, or even Windows, but he was a programmer. Rumor was the last product he actually worked on was a version of BASIC in the 80's.
Why code when you can take over the world. He's way to old to really be a programmer these days, anyhow.
Re:Wrong person (Score:3, Informative)
I heard a rumor that DOS 3 was the last project that contained any of his code.
Re:Wrong person (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates' rise to fame and power is because of his skill as a businessman - which I'm sure can be attributed to the laywer heritage he comes from.
Kildall was a programmer - pure and simple. He didn't stand a chance on the open market against Gates.
Bill Gates is a Criminal (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong.
Bill Gates rose to power because he is a criminal, and nothing was done when he broke the law.
Gates had the good fortune to be working in an industry that involved a totally new technology, i.e. software. This meant that the government had no idea what to do about Microsoft's various acts of sabotage, fraud, etc. In a smarter world, the courts would have realized that you don't need new laws, rather, the same laws apply to software as apply to other property, and in other industries.
Bill Gates won because the leaders of the other companies in the software industry were basically-honest, good businessmen, whereas Gates was a criminal.
When the law is not enforced, a criminal will beat a businessman every time.
Let's look at some of Microsoft's history.
Microsoft was losing to DR-DOS at the start of the nineties, until Microsoft added a false message about the incompatability of DR-DOS (Gates knew it was false from Microsoft's own testing).
That's fraud -- a criminal act. The courts ignored it.
Also at that time, Geoworks was five years ahead of Microsoft in providing a modern, working GUI for DOS. DR-DOS and Geoworks were being pre-installed on a large percentage of PCs. But Microsoft made a change to DOS specifically to cause Geoworks to fail.
That's sabotage -- a criminal act. The courts ignored it.
WordPerfect had already beaten Microsoft in the Word Processing market. But Microsoft side-tracked Wordperfect when they promised the world that OS/2 was the new direction, then undermined WordPerfect on Windows by providing intentionally-broken API calls.
That's fraud and sabotage, ignored by the courts.
Netscape had already beaten Microsoft in the browser market, until Microsoft started doing things like paying companies to break their contracts with Netscape.
There were various criminal acts there, which were generally ignored by the courts (other than a partial invocation of the nearly-useless anti-trust laws).
And in Java, Sun provided a cross-platform language that was perfect for web-based applications, such as e-commerce. Microsoft had nothing similar to offer, and it has taken Microsoft ten years to catch up.
Once again, Microsoft stopped Java with sabotage and fraud. And this time, Microsoft's criminal acts were perfectly documented [sun.com] in Microsoft's own internal papers:
Sabotage:
"Strategic Objective . . . Kill cross-platform Java by grow[ing] the polluted Java market."
Fraud:
"At this point its [sic] not good to create MORE noise around our win32 java classes. Instead we should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps."
Some people point to Microsoft as an example of Capitalism at work, but it's not true. When criminals are allowed to get away with their crimes, it actually undermines Capitalism.
To repeat my initial point. Bill Gates is NOT a "skilled businessman" -- he is a criminal, whose various acts of sabotage, fraud, and so on, should have landed him in jail.
Re:Bill Gates is a Criminal (Score:4, Informative)
I don't remember it that way. The reviewers thought DR DOS was better, but it was nowhere near MSDOS's market share. Sort of like how Firefox is better, but is just a blip on screen compared to IE.
Jerk, yes; criminal, no. (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft was losing to DR-DOS at the start of the nineties, until Microsoft added a false message about the incompatability of DR-DOS (Gates knew it was false from Microsoft's own testing).
This message never appeared in versions sold to consumers. Is the rest of your information as accurate?
Also at that time, Geoworks was five years ahead of Microsoft in providing a modern, working GUI for DOS. DR-DOS and Geoworks were being pre-installed on a large percentage of PCs. But Microsoft made a change to DOS specifically to cause Geoworks to fail.
Apparently, because I can't find a single reference to this by Googling.
Re:Jerk, yes; criminal, no. (Score:3, Informative)
Time is long and memories are short. Mine isn't what it used to be. People interpret the facts and "remember" things based upon what they percieved.
Revisionist historians try all kinds of dirty tricks.
Over the years I've seen many ruthless business moves from many companies, Microsoft included, and once superior products with great futures curtai
Re:Jerk, yes; criminal, no. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wrong person (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wrong person (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wrong person (Score:5, Insightful)
Some might view Kildall's story as being a sad one. A man driven to alcohol because his wife wouldn't sign an NDA or because he supposedly went flying. Whatever. The man had a poor business sense and he didn't see the value in doing what he needed to do to win.
It's not like he didn't make a ton of money. He ended up selling out to Novell for something like $125 million. Honestly, I think that's significant.
Re:Wrong person (Score:5, Insightful)
The "theft" of something you create can burn the soul much more than any loss of money.
Re:Wrong person (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wrong person (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wrong person (Score:5, Informative)
I personallly think the shame with Kildall is that he got so royally screwed by someone like Gates. But he wasn't the only one, the list of Gates's victims is long. Kildall was merely one of the first.
Free Stuff (Score:3, Informative)
The Microsoft C# compiler is free.
The Microsoft VB.NET compiler is free.
The Microsoft C compiler is free.
The Microsoft C++ compiler is free.
A Microsoft WebForm IDE is free (WebMatrix)
Re:Free Stuff (Score:3, Informative)
The latest free-ish Visual Studio Express stuff stops working in March or so. I'm not sure if apps compiled with them will stop as well. (Possibly it's built into the .NET 2 beta code.)
Re:Free Stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
The Microsoft C# compiler is free.
The Microsoft VB.NET compiler is free.
The Microsoft C compiler is free.
The Microsoft C++ compiler is free.
A Microsoft WebForm IDE is free (WebMatrix)
Free as in Beer. Find a bug in VB.NET compiler? Good luck fixing it....
PS: Ever wonder about the Intellectual Property of Beer producers? Their secret recipes and whatnot? Would they be offended by "Free as in beer"? Funny though, that.
Re:Wrong person (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I have a choice between either unfortunately.
Re:Wrong person (Score:5, Insightful)
Kildall ultimately sold his company to Novell Inc. (NOVL ) in 1991 for $120 million. He went on to create some pioneering multimedia technology, but never again was an industry player.
You know, after you break the $100 million mark I stop feeling sorry for you losing out on business deals.
Re:Wrong person (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, poor guy. He had ethics.
Are you suggesting that is impossible to be both ethical, and a successful businessperson? What about co-ops? Google? Saturn? If you'd RTFA, you'd see that in this case, "doing what was needed to win" consisted of "delivering a 16-bit version of your OS by next summer." Kildall couldn't/didn't. Gates did. So the contract went to Gates. Where does ethics enter into this? Gates had vision where Kildall didn't. This has nothing to do with ethics.
Re:Wrong person (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wrong person (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. At least that's precisely what I'm suggesting. Every example you provide (especially Saturn...for God's sake, man, that's General Motors, one of the most unethical corporations on the face of the planet) makes money by exploiting someone, somewhere. I don't let that keep me from sleeping at night, but let's at least be honest about what the nature of business is all about - someone benefits while someone e
Re:Wrong person (Score:5, Interesting)
Paul Allen was pretty much the brains and the charm behind getting Dos into the PC. Bill was just his friend.
IMHO: He got lucky.
Re:Wrong person (Score:5, Informative)
Right quote (almost), right context, wrong attribution. It was actually the chairman of IBM John Opel who said that when he heard that Don Estridge was working with Microsoft. He and Mary Gates had bumped into each other at the United Way board. The quote is "that wouldn't be Mary Gates's boy Bill would it?" (Big Blues, Paul Carroll, pp 33-34)
Re:Wrong person (Score:4, Insightful)
So... (Score:4, Funny)
No, and I'll tell you why (Score:4, Insightful)
You see that attitude reflected in 100,000 piss-poor open source projects that noone wants to use. They've got all these cool optimizations and clever hacks, and should have been the next greatest thing. Except they aren't, because noone gives a damn about them.
What makes a program or a company successful is what you do _after_ you have the cool algorithm or hack. Like user interface. Or like usability.
The same goes for CP/M. It was barely a program loader with the most minimalistic command-line interface. Even internally it was a primitive monolythic piece of code that basically it didn't even have DOS's (or Unix's) separation between directory entry and allocation table. It would have required a complete redesign just to support bigger floppies.
DOS or CP/M were but a starting point, _not_ a killer app that turned MS into a monopoly over night. Sure, the cash infusion from DOS helped a lot to get them started. But if MS had stayed happily making just DOS, they'd still be a small company noone gives a damn. In fact, less than that, since other OSs were more advanced and Moore's Law would soon make a PC good enough to use those instead of DOS.
The story of MS is far more complex than that of DOS alone. And their monopoly isn't just the OS, it's a whole lot of interlocking pieces which make the OS a must.
It includes for starters making some damn good and _affordable_ apps for it too. When you ask someone why don't they switch to Linux, what's the ISO standard answer you'll get? "Does it run Word, Excel and IE?" They jumped on any app idea that looked like their users might need badly.
It also includes caring about the developpers. Yes, laugh all you want at Uncle Fester's "developpers developpers developpers" monkey dance. But _that_ is what kept Windows having a steady stream of apps, while for other OSs you'd have a hard time just getting any dev tools at all.
Basically while all the idiots thought "noooo, you can't take my precioussss compiler! I want to be the only one who sells apps for my OS!" and left you begging for months even for a compiler, MS almost gave away everything you could possibly want to make an app.
It also includes being smart enough to realize the importance of users and of a good UI. You know why the relationship between IBM and Microsoft went sour? Because the idiots at IBM thought a GUI was a waste of money. That MS should concentrate on just making an API for geeks, and stop wasting money on stuff like a GUI.
Etc, etc, etc.
Saying that just replacing DOS with CP/M would have made another company become Microsoft, is short sighted and idiotic.
Coulda woulda shoulda (Score:4, Insightful)
Waaaa...waaaa...waaaaaahhhh. Cry me a river!
Memory lane.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I still have my boxed copies of CP/M-86, DR-C and DR-Fortran at home. Having used CP/M on an Apple ][+ with a Z80 card it was a pretty easy transition. To this day I still use Joe [sourceforge.net] as my editor. It's a virtual clone of WordStar that I used on the CP/M machine 20 years ago.
Too bad DOS and MS won out, CP/M was the cat's meow at the time.
Re:Memory lane.... (Score:3, Interesting)
My mother is a business studies teacher. Back in the 80's they used to have Amstrad PCW word processors in the classrooms for teaching word processing and spreadsheets. They were 4MHz Z80 machines with a single 3" floppy (180k) disk, 256k RAM and a proprietary cheap and nasty dot-matrix printer. They had monochrome bitmapped green screens. They ran CP/M 2.2 (IIRC) and came with Locomotive BASIC. One Saturday afternoon I hacked up a little Z80
Re:Memory lane.... (Score:4, Informative)
Cat's dung sounds more like it. CPM had FCBS instead of handles for file operations. For all practical purposes it was a VMS hangover which was horrible to program for and would have never scaled past what CPM was used for (simple 8 bit apps).
One of the reasons DOS won (besides bundling, IBM and Paul Allen's excellent business sense) was Dos 2.x which introduced file handles (idea nicked from Unix). In fact this is where the PC revolution started because it was easy to use and easy to write 3rd party software.
Re:Memory lane.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Digital Research never made applications. They believed that they should only make OSs and programing tools. I often wish Microsoft would have adopted that model as well.
Kildall is no Gates (Score:4, Insightful)
It's no good being a great programmer or having a great product generally if you can't communicate that or convince anyone of it.
Quoteth a former president (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quoteth a former president (Score:2)
Re:Quoteth a former president (Score:5, Interesting)
Persistence without talent, education, or genius, on the other hand, generally leads to the kind of fame that most of us would rather avoid. It's the single driving quality of that leechlike salesman you'd love to punch in the nose, or the lunatic-fringe politician who just won't go away even though he never comes within 1/100 of winning. It's the life and breath of tin-pot dictators and fanatics.
I agree with Cal's observations but not his conclusion. Persistence and determination can accomplish nothing worthwhile if you have no idea what you are doing.
Re:Kildall is no Gates (Score:3, Insightful)
(Personally, I think we should reward the people who helped the world the most as opposed those who persuaded the world to give them the most money for the least work; but that is just my opinion.)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
technical brilliance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Could have been Bill Gates eh? (Score:2, Funny)
Bil Gates... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure we've all had experiences of people telling us how clever Bill Gates is inventing Windows, or the Internet or whatever.
The real shame is that certain computer museums in the USA perpetuate the myth that the manufacturers of software like Bill Gates were actually the inventors of it. I also think that Steve Jobs is a cool guy but doesn't deserve much space in the history of computing. Commercialising and inventing are completely different things.
Re:Bil Gates... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, in the case of software, commercializing, while just as important, is harder.
Re:Bil Gates... (Score:5, Interesting)
But is it as worthy of our admiration?
Re:Bil Gates... (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh, that's a better reply than the geek rage I was expecting... I'm afraid I don't know the answer, though.
I do know that people with bright ideas come and go but those with the huge persistence and blind arrogance required to forge a new business area are rare and valuable.
Re:Bil Gates... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bil Gates... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ford did not invent the assembly line.
Edison did not invent the lightbulb.
Gates did not invent the internet.
Re:Bil Gates... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bil Gates... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes I do.
Jobs is brilliant at making great products, about understanding what will work commercially, etc. He'll look at something and say, hey, that's cool, we can do something with that. He's great at that. But that's different to inventing technology.
of course there are (Score:3, Interesting)
Slack moderators don't concentrate on modding up more than down. Slack moderators also don't browse at -1, but +2, so by the time your posting becomes visible the good moderators start to leave off and the bad ones knock it back down again.
And of course, in a crowd the size of the slashdot crowd there is room for any number of moderator conspiracies to co-exist, no doubt there is more than one of the type you mentioned.
its th
No big surprise... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't say I'm surprised to hear that Bill Gates wasn't the innovative programmer he's made out to be, but then we already knew that. His strengths have always been elsewhere, mainly in the form of making some pretty good business decisions. Because of that, this Kildall really couldn't have been Bill Gates - he obviously lacks the business sense.
I do find the assertion that it was all a conspiracy with IBM laughable, though. First, why would IBM care? Second, if IBM had a clue about the future value of DOS back then, they would have bought it outright rather than choosing to license it.
120 million reasons not to care (Score:2, Informative)
Coincidentally... (Score:3, Informative)
I was watching an old episode of Triumph of the Nerds [pbs.org] yesterday, and they mentioned how Gary Kildall didn't seize the opportunity.
Trusting IBM (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Trusting IBM (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people like it because if IBM likes the idea they'll throw IBM resourses at it and let you develop it and pay you to do it.
They give you a lot of resourses to get your idea off the ground and will reward you if its a successful product. If its credit your looking for do it yourself.
They even tell the interns, if you have an idea and you want to develop it DON"t tell it to us.
Re:Trusting IBM (Score:3, Insightful)
If you didn't like the details of the contract, you didn't have to sign. If you th
Re:Trusting IBM (Score:4, Insightful)
No, seriously, I don't mean to sound sarcastic; but, really... You worked for IBM. You came up with an idea on IBM's time. You told them about it. They own it. They can do what they want with it. Done.
As for getting credit... products from large corporations like that are usually faceless. You don't get a copy of, say, AIX, with the authors name on the front page of the manual. It MAY be embedded in the source, if you have access to the source. That's the only place you'll likely find a name.
Dataflow analysis! (Score:5, Informative)
CP/M was pretty cool, too
Wait a second... (Score:2, Interesting)
"Kildall's then-wife, Dorothy McEwen, the company's business manager, refused to sign their nondisclosure agreement. She is now ill with brain cancer and can't remember the events, according to daughter Kristin Kildall."
Do we see a trend here?
False Rights (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I'm sorry to see them hurt, but what did they expect?
Totally wrong assumptions (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Totally wrong assumptions (Score:3, Insightful)
And most importantly, he knows what the people want.
Expert C Programming (Score:2, Insightful)
There are more important things than being the richest man in the world.
Kildall dropped the ball. (Score:5, Informative)
IBM First went to MS asking for BASIC and if they could buy the OS that was built into Microsoft Softcards for the Apple II for the IBM PC. MS directed them to Digital Research saying that they didn't have the right to sell IBM the OS.
IBM goes to Digital Research, and basicially gets the cold shoulder.
IBM Goes back to MS asking for an alternative to CP\M.
Bill gates finds QDOS, buyes it for $50,000 dollars and sells the rights to it to IBM.
More infomation can be found on wikipedia Here [wikipedia.org]
Re:Kildall dropped the ball. (Score:3, Interesting)
Gates didn't win because he was a better busin
Re:Kildall dropped the ball. (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to implementing the CP/M API from the official programmer's reference.
Don't forget Novell (Score:5, Interesting)
Technical prowess != biggest fish in the big pond (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if you're product is technically best by some measure there are other products that may be technically better by some other measure. Hindsight often tells you which benchmark was right and which was wrong but in the heat of battle it's hard to see the forest for the trees.
And all that said, oftentimes the selected product is simply vaporware (as was MS-DOS until Gates bought QDOS) when there are real running products out there. Part of it is salesmanship on one side and lack of salesmanship on the other side, but usually there's some favors being traded under the table.
And while Kildall wasn't the biggest fish in that pond, he had hooks into a number of software packages (CP/M was being sold on millions of PC's, the DR languages and tools too).
Re:Technical prowess != biggest fish in the big po (Score:4, Informative)
86-DOS, the sucessor to QDOS, was available from Seattle Computer and also used by used at least one other company, Lomas Data Products, before the IBM PC was announced (see the Lomas Data products ad in the June 1981 issue of BYTE).
The BizWeek article was wrong in saying that MS improved 86-DOS for use with the PC. PC-DOS 1.0 was basically 86-DOS 1.14. The big modifications was to make it look more like CP/M UI.
One of the biggest markets for CP/M was the Apple Z-80 board made by M$ and designed by Seattle Computer. The 86-DOS deal was the second time that SCP got screwed over by MS.
Isn't the NDA thing a myth? (Score:3, Interesting)
So I recall hearing somewhere...
The Parasitic Sub-Society of The Elites (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just another example of how the elites at the top of the hieracrchy operate as some sort of parasitic sub-society, perched above us, exploiting the rest of us, feeding off of us.
You may think that my perspective is warped, paranoid, whatever. But I think it serves as a reality check and a balance to the omnipresent messages of confomuity that society and the media flood us with every day.
Re:The Parasitic Sub-Society of The Elites (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Parasitic Sub-Society of The Elites (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever hear of the 15/85 rule? Its from How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Those figures are from a study of engineers they conducted where they determined whether it was technical knowledge or people skills that got you ahead. The results were that its 15% technical skills, 85% people skills.
I really do get sick of the bitching and moaning on here when people get upset that they aren't getting ahead in their path because the system is broken. Guess what,
Re:Again, Circular Logic! (Score:3, Insightful)
But there are also sub-elite parasitic sub-societies, faith-based parasitic sub-societies, scum-of-the-earth parasitic sub-societies, and internet parasitic sub-societies.
Society works this way. Nobody will invite you to join their band if they don't know that you play the bassoon. How will they find out? Either they'll see you playing on a street corner, see your fly
Re:The Parasitic Sub-Society of The Elites (Score:3, Insightful)
I actually didn't know that stuff about Gates. I thought he was just a sleazy businessman, but it turns out
Re:The Parasitic Sub-Society of The Elites (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft was incorporated in 1975. By 1980 it was well established and strongly positioned as a language company for microcomputers. MBASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL. It was certainly not an unknown quantity to IBM.
Re:The Parasitic Sub-Society of The Elites (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think it was a class thing. I think it was more of an east-coast/west-coast thing, or a new-industry/old-industry thing. Digital Research w
I was going to read the article but... (Score:5, Funny)
I dont think so. (Score:3, Insightful)
Kildall was too engrossed with making immediate profit to, even if he had got in the door first, have prospered for long.
So, Kildall == SCO of microsoft world? (Score:3, Funny)
The book is a good read for nerds (Score:5, Interesting)
In my 30 years of programming, many of them at startups, I know of nothing to compare to the myriad drained lives, burnt hopes and stolen thunder that bob and sink in the wake of Mr. Gates. Larry Ellison may be a runner up to Gates in this grim category but that is usually how those two fare in their competition. For every millionaire Gates made, there was a company out there that had a good idea and smart people who still couldn't grow in the shade of Microsoft. To name names would rub salt in the wounds of some good friends...lets just say having a great idea and a willingness to work hard are not enough to insure success. The lucky ones were assimilated.
accuracy of flying story (Score:3, Informative)
Simple business plan.. (Score:4, Funny)
2) Everyone adopts your O/S because it is cheap to buy, or can be copied for free easily.
3) See off all competition, make the API so huge & unweildly that no one can clone it. Patent bits of it to make sure.
4) Stamp down on copying, introduce draconian licensing scheme that ties every copy you sell to one PC, undermining normal rights of purchasers to resell or move O/S to other PCs.
5) Jack up prices.
6)...
7) PROFIT!
Gary on Video (Score:4, Informative)
Bill Gates was a dumpster diver (Score:3, Interesting)
"Because an embittered drunk says so." isn't fact. (Score:3, Insightful)
So, the entire chapter is based on the writings of an embittered drunk after he had become an embittered drunk.
"Screw you all, I would have been Shaq if it hadn't have been for that deliberate foul that caused my knee injury!" doesn't make the washed up drunk any more of a pro basketball player. It doesn't even mean the foul was deliberate. It means an embittered person who didn't have any of the rest of the personality aspects that led to the other person's success, never put in the work, never fought as hard to get back up from setbacks, and, likely, wasn't even fouled half as deliberately as they've come to convince themselves has simply convinced themselves that their life could have been better if it wasn't for something unfair someone else did to them.
Basing an article on their embittered rantings, because it makes for a sensational enough article to sell some copies of your book and get some headlines, isn't exactly what I'd call great journalism.
Re:"Because an embittered drunk says so." isn't fa (Score:3, Informative)
-- How Kildall got fucked --
1) When the IBM PC was released both CP/M and DOS were avaliable. DOS for $40, and CP/M for $240 (If this was a joke, Gary wasn't laughing.)
-- How Kildall fucked himself --
1) He was late for a meeting w/ IBM because he was out flying.
2) He refused to make CP/M more user friendly. It was an incr
He couldnt have been 'Gates' (Score:3, Insightful)
I dont believe Gary could be the same sort of ruthless business man that Bill has been.
Having the product is only 1/3 of a business, the rest is how you manage 'the business'....
You are speaking out of ignornace (Score:3, Informative)
I met Gary Kildall once, and was lucky enough to get a handshake from him, and a Hello.
It was not that he was a bad businessman. It was that he was never about money. He truly believed in sharing his ideas with the people. He was the true populist. He thought that the purpose of his inventions were to aid in the advancement of humanity. I mean that literally, not as rhetoric; some people are actually altruistic by nature.
It is an indictment of us all, that we equate money and power with success. We claim to rise above that, yet the comments here demonstrate the hypocracy of that thought.
We have never had such a hero on our side. Apparently, we do not deserve one.
Re:So Basically (Score:3, Interesting)
There is also evidence to suggest that Microsoft were following similar practices many years before the DoJ case. See also "The Microsoft File: The Secret Case against Bill Gates" [amazon.com]