The story Gary Kildall: The man who was everything that Bill Gates isn't [The origins of DOS, and details in-between]

Gary wrote CP/M. Tim Patterson made a shitty unauthorized clone of it and sold it to Microsoft.

Although this post has lots of background info, a video from Housatonic Live is one of the most comprehensive videos about Gary Kildall. I've been investigating this topic and chasing down breadcrumbs of info on the matter since 2012. The Housatonic Live video checks-out and covers more ground.

See the "Anti-TL;DR" below if you don't have time to read this entire post. For those of you who think this doesn't belong here, well I've spent many showers in deep thought on this matter. It could be said that this post is the culmination of many shower thoughts.

Gates and proponents often say that when IBM asked him for an OS, he didn't have one so he magnanimously sent IBM to Gary. Since Gary was out flying his airplane, he wasn't there in the morning when IBM showed up. However he did show later that day for the big meeting and there are two or three similar versions of this story.

When Gates called Gary on the phone, he was supposedly bound by a non-disclosure contract and could not tell him that the special visitor was IBM. Had Gary known, he might've rescheduled other meeting and been at the meeting from the beginning as opposed to showing after flying his plane.

Gary wanted a licensing deal (in which IBM pays per copy of DOS). IBM wanted to buy CP/M outright and to rename it to whatever they wanted and so a deal was not struck. This is important because they ended up giving this deal to Gates. Heck, in the TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley there's a scene where an **imitation of Steve Ballmer tells it like this (@ the 48:50 mark):

"This is amazing. Not Just Amazing.. It's historic! It should be taught in all the history books.. I mean, hung and framed in the national gallery or something, because THIS is the instant of creation of one of the greatest fortunes in the history of the world. Bill Gates is the richest guy in the world because of what started in this room. You know what else... it wasn't exactly smoke and mirrors BUT WE DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING! I mean, NOT A DAMN THING!** Here we were were, this two-bit little outfit telling IBM we had the answer to their problems. D-DOS -- THE DISK OPERATING SYSTEM to make all those zillion IBM computers compute. WE DIDN'T EVEN REMOTELY OWN ANYTHING LIKE what Bill was selling them. Nada. Zip.

So that's the TV documentary version of the story. What was left out?

When IBM went back to Gates at Microsoft, this time he said "yes" and indicated that he now had an operating system for their new project (the first IBM PC). In reality, Gates had to make arrangements to buy this operating system from Tim Patterson for $75k.

Problem is, Tim Patterson did not write a unique OS and thus wasn't exactly his to sell. He basically copied CP/M with the help of a debugger and a CP/M programming manual. I will be explaining this in a more detailed post in the future. Beyond that, there was some other scummy shit. For example, when Gary Kildall found out that Patterson's rip-off of CP/M was being used in the new IBM PC, he was was unhappy and considering a law suit. As a result, IBM agreed to sell CP/M alongside MS-DOS on the first model(s) of the IBM PC. Turned out that MS-DOS was only $40 additional while CP/M was $240 more.

Had Gary known this, maybe he would've told IBM to bundle his OS at a lower price. I would say that he was screwed by omission, but this is the shit that happens when a skilled I.T. hobbyist goes up against a cut-throat businessman/piece of shit human being such as Gates. A law wasn't broken here, but they (IBM and Gates) weren't acting on good-faith. Side Note: Gates' mom Mary Maxwell Gates was friends with one of the honchos at IBM because she served with them on the board of directors for the United Way. She apparently put in a good word.

 

While CP/M was the most popular microcomputer operating system in the 1970s among hobbyists and computer-oriented writers, all of the dumb managers in suits gravitated to the PC with the IBM sticker on it once it debuted in 1980. Through the 80s CP/M's popularity declined. In the late 80s, Gary's company created DR-DOS -- a clone of MS-DOS (from scratch). The precedent was set when MS got away with using an unauthorized clone of CP/M, so Gary did nothing wrong here. The "DR" in DR-DOS stood for "Digital Research" (his company), many of the smarter I.T. people back then jokingly called it "Doctor DOS" because it solved a lot of the bugs that were prevalent in MS-DOS. DR-DOS also had innovations like the ability to run multiple applications with multiple users. As indicated from these two videos, DR-DOS was directly the result of work on "Concurrent DOS".

After selling the intellectual property to Caldera, Gary did some charity work involving kids with Pediatric AIDS while just trying to chill out with a few race cars. He even started a small company named "Prometheus Light and Sound" which created an early Smartphone called "Intelliphone". The idea was that it could work as an office phone, and a cell-phone.... all-in-one. When you are home, it connects to your office wireless system which is tied into the land-line phone. When you're outside, it uses cellular. They did a few other really cool things but this was near the tail-end of Gary's life. For example, the Intelli-phone could be integrated with your lighting, and home theater. Literally, all the shit that we are doing with smart lights now was being done by Gary's last company before he died.

By this point, he was supposedly drinking a lot. Can't really blame him. For example, at one point Kildall was invited to graduation/commencement at the University of Washington, the school at which he graduated from. As it turned out, Gates was also invited as the prestigious guest speaker. So basically, Kildall had to sit there and watch fucking Bill Gates a college drop out, give a big commencement speech at the podium. This among other things chipped-away at his ego and served to demoralize him. I mean like, to this day people think and say that "Bill Gates is a computer genius!" This in addition to his "philanthropic works."

Anti-TL;DR:

Gates wasn't a computer genius. Perhaps smart in his own right, perhaps even an adequate or moderately proficient programmer. More likely Gates cold code in BASIC, but it was Paul Allen who did the heavy-lifting in those early days by coding in assembly language. In contrast, BASIC is easy, you and I can learn it today.. it's practically like coding in English. Assembly language on the other hand, is like two steps above "machine code" and is a real challenge. So yeah he was obviously successful in the industry, but at what cost?

Would Gary Kildall have testified or given a statement during the 1998 Department of Justice proceedings (video) against MS for "anti-competitive business practices." Just observe how Gates cages his responses, and deflects. If it were you or I, we'd probably be slapped with obstruction of justice for that kind of shit. So yeah, I do believe that Kildall would've recorded a pretty damming statement if he weren't dead. I mean shit, my head hurts just from playing 4 minutes of that video.

Writing about Bill Gates, Kildall described him as" (From Kildall's unpublished memoir 'Computer Connections'):

"more of an opportunist than a technical type, and severely opinionated, even when the opinion he holds is absurd."

"Don't think for a minute that [Bill] Gates made it 'big time' because of his technical savvy.""

Oh I didn't even get to his death. Well, there's basically three similar version. Whether Kildall hit his head on concrete steps, fell from a bar stool, or incurred the injury in a bar fight is not exactly clear. From the Wikipedia article which echoes previous write-ups:

On July 8, 1994, Kildall sustained a head injury at the Franklin Street Bar & Grill, a biker bar in Monterey, California.[29] The exact circumstances of the injury are unclear. Various sources have claimed he fell from a chair, fell down steps, or was assaulted, because he had entered the bar wearing Harley-Davidson leathers.[14] Harold Evans, in They Made America, states that Kildall "stumbled and hit his head" inside the bar, and "was found on the floor."[6]

Following the injury, Kildall was discharged from the hospital twice. He was pronounced dead at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, on July 11, 1994.

Kildall's cause of death remains disputed. An autopsy, conducted on July 12, did not conclusively determine the cause of death.28 3 Evans states that Kildall's head injury triggered a cerebral hemorrhage, causing a blood clot to form inside the skull.[6] A CP/M Usenet FAQ states that Kildall was concussed due to his injury, and died of a heart attack; the connection between the two is unclear.30

Okay, we don't know really exactly what happened and I'm all ears if others got ideas. In an independent podcaster's investigation, it was noted that Gary died one month after Bill's mom. The speculation is that Bill's mom like Gary, had a soft-spot for him since they all lived nearby and Gary was a genuinely nice fellow. Did Bill wait until his mom's death before sending corporate assassins/goons to deal with Gary?

I don't know, but of course this theory appeals to me because I strongly dislike or hate Gates (still not sure if I should hate him or pity him). It may have simply been a night in which Gary was drunk, scruffy bikers and him exchanged looks which in turn lead to a verbal exchange resulting from bad attitudes which in turn lead to some kind of brawl. However, without more evidence in either direction, I'm not taking any of the aforementioned possibilities off the table.

I would seriously consider giving a kidney to go back in time in order to save Gary so that he could be alive in 1998 to give a statement to the Department of Justice about the AARD code.

&nbp;

Follow-ups posts will cover the following ground:

• The distinction between mainframes, minicomputers, and microcomputers (aka mainframes, minis, and micros).

• The vibrant early days of microcomputers in the 1970s in which hobbyists designed, created, assembled, programmed, innovated, and used a variety of unique machines.

• Why the microprocessor was a game changer.

• Gary's contribution, the importance of CP/M (why it became so popular), and why floppy disk drives we a big deal.

• Further speculation based on historical evidence as to why that meeting with IBM didn't work out for Gary.

Pretty much a lot of stuff that I wrote but couldn't fit into a comment response. Stuff that could certainly stand to be edited and refined further. There's a lot of background info especially for those who are younger or not familiar with history of computers.

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source https://www.reddit.com/r/C_S_T/comments/o76q6q/the_story_gary_kildall_the_man_who_was_everything/