Bill Gates has written lots of code. He is (or at least was) a truly
outstanding programmer. Years ago he was known to review code, find
something he didn't like and call up the programmer and give 'em hell.
MS Programmers have also been known to suddenly receive bonuses as stock
options because Bill liked their code. The very highest status a
programmer could hope to achieve was having been recognized by Bill in
this way.
Also, PC-DOS has always been on the market. In fact you can still buy a
copy (version 8.0). It has always been maintained separately from MS-DOS
since its inception. A significant portion of PC-DOS was (and still is)
strictly blue-code.
Bill bought QDOS for $40,000 cash and some vague promises about further
deals. Many, many companies have looked back at their dealings with
Bill and realized they've been had. BigTime. The dirty dealings with
IBM are by far the worst thing on Bill's list of dirty tricks and
double-crosses.
73, Doug -- K0DXV
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
That's the story I remember. Gates has been great at acquiring other peoples
projects and turning them into gold..I'm not sure he's ever actually written a
line of code!
Doug
W6JD
-------------- Original message --------------
From: Brian Lloyd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Jun 3, 2007, at 4:54 AM, Fred (FL) wrote:
And Bill Gates empire was launched, and IBM got
its first DOS contract from Gates - and IBM's PC was
launched.
The way I remember it, IBM decided they wanted a version of CP/M for
their new Intel 8086-based system and went to Digital Research.
Somehow the folks at DR managed to really annoy the folks from IBM.
(I heard it that Gary Kildall's wife wouldn't deal with them because
Gary was out-of-town.) So IBM turned to the small company that was
supposed to provide the BASIC interpreter for the new "PC": Microsoft.
Bill Gates of Microsoft assured IBM that Microsoft had a replacement
for CP/M-86 even though they really didn't. (Ah, vapor-ware has been
with us for a LONG time.) Microsoft then quickly purchased the rights
to a CP/M lookalike called QDOS. That became IBM's PC-DOS which
Microsoft then renamed MS-DOS. The rest is history.
73 de Brian, WB6RQN
Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT com
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