Replies

That is true, but MS was the company that built the OS, or at least expanded on an existing OS. IBM, by allowing their product to be cloned, did a lot for the home PC market. The fact is though, without MS, there would have been no competition for Apples GUI and PC sales would never have reached the point they have today. You are assuming someone would have jumped in and filled the void left by MS if Bill Gates hadn't decided to go off on his own. There is nothing to back that assumption, no one brought out a competing system, ever. Apple doesn't count because they already existed, and their product was too expensive, the other systems out there met quick deaths.

I stand by my statements, but will throw in IBM also as motivators for the PC market(Apples biggest mistake was to not allow cloning).

That is true, but MS was the company that built the OS, or at least expanded on an existing OS.

Actually, no. Bill Gates, having no OS and only a tiny piece of the compiler market, had his mommy get him the gig with IBM.

When IBM came to Gates, Gates said, "Sure, I've got an OS for you. Come back in three months," and IBM left happy.

Gates then went to go see Tim Patterson at Seattle Computing who actually did have an OS called Quick-and-Dirty OS or QDOS. Gates bought QDOS for $75,000 and after renaming it MSDOS, he delivered it to IBM.

It was widely known that QDOS was pretty much ripped off from CP/M, written by Gary Kildall.

Wary of being sued by Kildall, IBM offered to license CP/M from Kildall and make it available for the IBM PC too. When Kildall's wife threw some IBM suits out of their house because they wanted her to sign an NDA, IBM fixed Kildall. They priced CP/M at $240 and MSDOS at $50, thus ensuring that DOS would win out.

So, no, Gates did very little except commit fraud by selling something he didn't have.