Hi elmatador,
ASIDE: I really liked that nickname of Elmie bestowed upon you by Malcolm, but I'll refrain from using it... <g>
he acquired from a small company and didn't sell, but licensed it to IBM.
You're really making me dig deep into the archives of my memory now... <ggg>
Yes, Microsoft actually was under contract to IBM to develop an operating system language for IBM's personal computers, back around the time frame of 1978/1980, something like that anyway.
Microsoft actually acquired QDOS (as I recall, the "Quick and Dirty Operating System"), which Microsoft renamed to MS-DOS. It was presented to IBM, who quickly declined any rights to MS-DOS that they had under their contract with Microsoft. In fact, IBM (at that point in time) largely abandoned their small computer (PC) project because they saw it as unviable, unable to compete with big mainframes, and unmarketable (who besides computer "geeks" would want to own a small computer, unable to effectively compete against larger computers?).
Microsoft had acquired QDOS (MS-DOS) from some guy named Patterson at Seattle Computer Productions (or something like that), so it was actually the smaller company that developed what we eventually refer to as DOS.
Along about the same time frame, some guy named Kilgore (Kildeer, Kildare, I can't remember his exact name) developed a similar operating system for Apple Computers which was based upon the early DEC operating systems like RSTS. (I had been exposed to DEC [Digital Equipment Corporation] operating systems while learning about computers in the early 1980s.)
The bottom line is that IBM clearly had the rights to what eventually became MS-DOS, and they turned their noses up at the thought of it. Short-sighted? Maybe, maybe not. But the rest is history...
KJC
PS - For a humorous "look" at the history of DOS, read here:
antioffline.com |
