Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote: Gates was at the helm of Microsoft when it acquired DOS. DOS came out many > years after and was an anorexic imitation of UNIX. >
That is incorrect. They brought it out within months, not years. IBM wanted an operating system for the upcoming PC. Microsoft hustled to purchase one from Seattle Computer Products and then get it ready for the PC. It was an imitation of CP/M, not UNIX. In my opinion at that time, it was much better than CP/M. It was never a secret that they bought it. They improved it a great deal. Microsoft was slow to produce Windows but they kept up with needed changes to DOS. There is one thing about I find regrettable about this history. When IBM was looking for an operating system, they went to several places including Microsoft, Digital Research and Data General. They thought about using the Data General Micro-Nova operating system. I was using it at the time. It was far superior to DOS or CP/M. It had excellent multi-tasking. If they had selected it, computers in the 1980s would have been better, and programmers would have been spared millions of hours of grief. I think I recall reading that Data General was not interested in a deal with IBM. - Jed
