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"Yup - DOS was a direct rip off from
OS/8 & PAL-8 from PDP8 DEC minicomputers
It was amazing to be able to run FORTRAN in 4K"

As the story goes, IBM was looking for an operating system. Bill Gates was writing a spreadsheet for them at the time. Some IBM suit guys went to visit a DOS writing group (was it QDOS or perhaps CP/M?) who turned out to be a bunch of dope smoking hippies. The hippy types didn't fit in well with the gray suit guys so the suits left.

Soon after, IBM asked Gates if he could provide an operating system, because Gates wore a suit when he met with IBM. Gates bought a DOS program (I think the number was $30K). That system became PC-DOS and later MSDOS.

Bill Gates' fortune and Microsoft's success are partially due to the fact that some hippy programmers couldn't put on a suit to meet with IBM.

I'm not entirely sure of the exact facts here, but the story has been documented well. I once saw a TV documentary with interviews of all of the partys.

The hippy programming dudes did OK but obviously never had the success of Microsoft. It seems to me that some of them were working/owning Digital Research at one time.