On Fri, 21 Aug 2015, Geoff Oltmans wrote:
The way I've heard the story before, was that Kildall was surprised when he finally saw the price sheet for the pricing of CP/M-86 vs PC-DOS. I
I've heard that, but it was from people who did not think that the original contact with IBM was mishandled.
guess we can either interpret that as he priced it too high and had no idea what MS were charging for PC-DOS, or that IBM deliberately priced them out of the market.
It could have been either. I tend towards thinking that it was DRI's mistake. I do not have the business experience nor acumen to have any idea how much lead time there was on pricing, nor how long a price change would take.
When the PC came out (August 1981), I got MS-DOS, is was the only thing available. I assumed that once it was available that CP/M-86 would become the standard. When it came out, at a high price, I STILL thought that it would become the standard eventually, but stayed with MS-DOS waiting for that. I really don't think that I was alone in that thinking. But, the long delay, "waiting for CP/M-86 to become the standard", was long enough for MS-DOS to become solidly entrenched, and in the early versions, there was no obvious advantage to justify switching. When CP/M-86 came down in price, it was too late. (and maybe it should have come down ALL the way to MS-DOS price ($60? V $40 was the later price))
