Gary Kildall
Gary Kildall ( born May 19, 1942 in Seattle, † 11 July 1994 in Monterey, California ) was the inventor of the operating system CP / M and founder of Digital Research.
Biography
1963 married Gary Kildall his high school sweetheart Dorothy McEwen ( 1943-2005 ). 1969 her son Scott was born in 1971 and her daughter Kristin. After receiving his doctorate in computer science at the University of Washington in 1972, he had in the same year the first contact with the just burgeoning micro- computer age, while he was working at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS ) in Monterey as a computer science teacher.
1973 Kildall started with programming a runtime environment for the programming language PL / I ( Programming Language One). In the early 1970s originated with the invention of the floppy disk ( floppy disk engl. ) a new, inexpensive storage medium for minicomputers. But in order to operate it on microcomputers, it required a suitable operating system that Kildall completed in 1974 and presented. He called it CP / M ( " Control Program / Monitor", later mostly reinterpreted in "Control Program for Microcomputers "), which he completed in version 1.0 1975. First offered Kildall CP / M for $ 20,000 IBM for sale, as he had already previously worked as a freelance consultant on various projects for IBM. When IBM refused, he founded the end of 1975, the company Digital Research (DRI ).
After he retired in 1976 at the NPS, he continued his work on CP / M, which he originally applied later and sold through classified ads in computer magazines such as Dr. Dobb 's Journal in the byte. The MITS Altair 8800, a computer was finally introduced in 1975, on the CP / M was run. 1976 IMSAI approached Gary Kildall approach and asked for a to the IMSAI 8080 ( a clone of the Altair ) adapted version of CP / M. CP / M already existed in version 1.2, and so Kildall had the idea to split its operating system in a hardware-specific part with the Name BIOS and hardware-independent part called BDOS. At the end of the year Clones this computer came on the market, which had a floppy drive, and CP / M operating system as needed, and in 1977 it was the most popular and widely used operating system in the world. CP / M ran on virtually any computer with 8080 -, 8085 - or Z80 processor.
1977 Kildall licensed CP / M for $ 25,000 to IMSAI, and thus laid the foundation stone for the steep economic rise of DRI.
1981 employed a DRI of 75 employees and annual sales of six million dollars. In the same year, IBM announced its plans for the IBM personal computer. Looking for an operating system for the IBM PC in development, IBM 1980 also turned to Digital Research. Supposedly Bill Gates personally IBM have referred to DRI. Microsoft had sold for the Apple II a plug with which CP/M-80 did use on that computer. The card sold so well that Microsoft with their sold almost as many CP / M licenses in the bundle, like DRI itself. For this reason, IBM is alleged to have first requested by mistake at Microsoft due to the delivery of an operating system. As an established system with 200,000 installations CP / M was probably the first choice for the future operating system of the new IBM PC, but lost his Digital Research CP / M finally against Microsoft's MS -DOS. To date, the reasons why between Digital Research and IBM no agreement was reached, the subject of speculation.
A rumor says that IBM representative Gary Kildall not encountered when they tried to submit the offer to supply the operating system. According to Gary Kildall have preferred to go gliding. This version is very controversial, because in certain circles was well known that Gary Kildall business affairs actually left his wife Dorothy. And so says one another rumor, this was simply not prepared to sign a confidentiality agreement, as had been requested by their IBM representative. Tom Rolander, then an employee at Digital Research, however, testified that Gary Kildall was flying with him in the morning for a meeting with North Star Computers, came back after lunch and signed the confidentiality agreement. After his presentation, we were with IBM to an agreement because both the pay was not too low ( 100,000 for the exclusive right to distribute CP/M-86 without volume limitation) as well as the demand to rename the operating system into PC-DOS was not acceptable. Had Gary Kildall received it, he would have this right then you must give all our customers.
These will be then returned to Bill Gates. Gates IBM offered to provide an operating system. He got himself unceremoniously at a small company called Seattle Computer Products. It was a CP / M clone for the 8086 CPU called 86- DOS. It was written by Tim Paterson. He had been listening closely to the properties and operating system interface of CP / M. Microsoft licensed 86- DOS first and bought end of July 1981, the rights to it. The later delivered operating system PC DOS was version 1.0 which is adapted to the IBM - PC version of 86 -DOS. As yet learned of the similarity of the two operating systems during the development Gary Kildall, he wrote to IBM and Bill Gates and asked for clarification. Only at this time learned IBM as PC-DOS came about. DRI received $ 800,000 that they not sued IBM, and IBM agreed to also offer CP/M-86 for the IBM PC and to pay royalties. However, it was offered for six times the price of PC-DOS, PC-DOS which is why very soon became marktbeherschend.
In 1983, Gary Kildall GEM, the Graphical Environment Manager, a graphical operating system user interface, had been inspired to Kildall by working with Apple's Lisa and the 1984 was licensed by Atari for its ST computer. GEM was formerly known as the Microsoft Windows platform, and had significantly lower hardware requirements. But Kildall did not recognize the potential that was in GEM, and so it was hardly actively marketed and soon outstripped by the products of Apple and Microsoft. Apple sued other than Microsoft even DRI because of the similarity to the Mac OS, so this had to be adjusted. In fact, DRI fell by the success of Microsoft's MS -DOS under increasing pressure, and also within the company, it kriselte, not least because Kildall and his wife had indeed separated in 1983 ( and were later divorced ), but both remained in the company.
In May 1988, brought with Digital Research DR -DOS MS- DOS - compatible operating system on the market, as well as the multitasking Concurrent CP/M-86, which had been brought to market in 1984, not against the dominant position of MS- prevailed DOS. He also developed the data format for multimedia CD and brought " Grolier's Encyclopedia " on CD -ROM encyclopedia on the market, which began as one of the first products hypertext for navigation.
1991 sold to Novell Kildall Digital Research and moved to West Lake Hills, a suburb of Austin, Texas. Here he founded the company Prometheus Light and Sound, and was involved in AIDS -infected children and adolescents.
Although he had become through the sale of Digital Research to Novell to a very wealthy man (120 million dollars), this brought Gary Kildall in private little luck. Friends reported that the fact that people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were celebrated in the face of the triumphant march of the personal computer as pioneers, as he ( like others ) rapidly fell into oblivion, hurt him deeply - although he has never done this in public. In addition, his second marriage broke up.
Whether PC DOS violated the copyrights on CP / M is still a matter of speculation. There are rumors of threatened lawsuits and secret agreements, but neither side has ever spoken publicly about it. Shortly before his death Kildall wrote his still 226 pages strong memoirs, which are supposed to contain a settlement with Microsoft, but they were not published until today. However, it served as a template for a chapter on Gary Kildall in a 2004 book by Harold Evans: They Made America. The last years of his life working Gary Kildall hard on a manuscript for a book: Computer Connections: People, Places, and Events in the Evolution of the Personal Computer Industry.
Kildall was convinced that PC DOS violates his copyrights to CP / M. But the case law on computer software was then still in its infancy. The historic decision in the case of Apple against Franklin, which confirmed on software in the U.S. for the first time the applicability of copyright, only two years was back and, according to colleagues and friends to Kildall did not want to engage in a lengthy and costly legal dispute with IBM. Many years later, Gary Kildall to have said in several interviews: " Ask why the string in function 9 ends Bill [ Gates ] with a dollar sign. He can not answer. Only I know it. " Former Employees of him as Gordon Eubanks marked him as someone who avoided conflict. He believed that the better system would prevail in the market, and for a long time offered no DRI programming languages , since he did not want to provoke Bill Gates.
Gary Kildall died on 11 July 1994 at the age of 52 years to the internal bleeding of his head injuries he had, sustained in a bar fight in a motorcycle rocker bar (Franklin Street Bar and Grill ) in Monterey, California on 8 July 1994 - not, as it was called in some contemporary reports to a fall.