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Editor says, what if Gary Kildall had not been out flying when IBM called? This idea was suggested by guest historian Stan Brin. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the February 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1980, disregarding the unduly cautious legal advice of his attorney Gerry Davis, operating system guru Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. (DRI) took a snap business decision and signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) presented by the impatient IBM lead negotiator Jack Sams.
CP/M licensed for IBM PCsWith that routine formality out of the way, the IBM representatives visibly relaxed, and the historic meeting at Pacific Grove progressed into substantive discussions. The conclusion was an agreement to license CP/M-86 for the IBM PC, but it was a done deal after Tom Rolander demonstrated DRI's brilliant multi-tasking operating system.
Until the NDA was signed, the IBM representatives had been unwilling to reveal their plans. Because their one-year accelerated product-to-market plan ("Project Chess") was dependent upon the taking of a strategic decision to drop their first choice Motorola chip. This judgement was central to the negotiations because DRI's MP/M-86 already worked on the second choice Intel 16-bit model (the operating system had actually been developed two years before).
Inevitably, the most sensitive aspect of the negotation was commercial. Because IBM opened bidding with a ludicrous offer of the one-off payment of $250,000 unaware that CP/M was generating annualised sales of $6m. Eventually, they settled on the scalar formula that would make Rowlander and Kildall (pictured) fabulously wealthy, a royalty price of $10 per license. After this business was concluded, three quite startling facts emerged.
- Kildall and Rowlander had been scheduled to fly to meet with a CP/M distributor. Fortunately, the meeting had been cancelled because Kildall's wife Dororthy was notoriously hesitant to sign NDAs without her husband present.
- DRI was scheduled to meet with representatives of IBM's competitor, Hewlett Packard that very afternoon.
- IBM had made the lazy assumption that a company in Seattle owned CP/M. Amazingly, Jack Sams and his colleague Pat Harrington had even contacted a couple of "long-hairs" who had been reluctantly forced to admit they did not own the operating system and instead referred the IBM-ers to DRI.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Technology Source: Wikipedia Labels: Gary Kildall, IBM, Motorola, Microsoft, Digital Research. Editor says, in reality Gary Kildall left licensing negotiations to Dorothy, as he usually did, while he and colleague Tom Rolander used Gary's private airplane to deliver software to manufacturer Bill Godbout. Before the IBM representatives could explain the purpose of their visit, they insisted that DRI accept a standard non-disclosure agreement that required it not to reveal anything about the meeting and allowed IBM unfettered use of any information that DRI might disclose. On the advice of DRI attorney Gerry Davis, Dorothy refused to sign the agreement without Gary's approval. Gary returned in the afternoon and tried to move the discussion with IBM forward, but accounts disagree on whether he signed the non-disclosure agreement, as well as whether he met with the IBM representatives or was merely at DRI while discussions were in progress.
~ And the blue screen of death was but a nightmare in the mind of a minor New Mexican software business owner...
~ And Kildall never sued microsoft because Bill Gates was his former student. At least, that's what he told me.
~ Actually, the multi-tasking operating system, originally called m/pm, and eventually called PC-DOS, was available two years earlier. Thanks Stan, I have made this point cleared - Ed
~ Wonder what the aesthetic of computing would be like: mor boxy ala Microsoft or Mac's roundedness.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
