Interesting story of how MS got into the operating system business. IBM wanted the CPM operating system, but Digital Research wouldn’t sign ibms NDA… really a pivot point in computing history.
Jack Sams (IBM) was looking for a package from Microsoft containing both the BASIC computer language and an Operating System. But IBM hadn't done their homework.
Steve Ballmer:
They thought we had an operating system. Because we had this Soft Card product that had CPM on it, they thought we could licence them CPM for this new personal computer they told us they wanted to do, and we said well, no, we're not in that business.
Jack Sams (IBM);
When we discovered we didn't have - he didn't have the rights to do that and that it was not...he said but I think it's ready, I think that Gary's got it ready to go. So I said well, there's no time like the present, call up Gary.
Steve Ballmer:
And so Bill right there with them in the room called Gary Kildall at Digital Research and said Gary, I'm sending some guys down…. Treat them right, they're important guys.
Whether Kildall actually blew IBM off at that meeting or not, what was definitely the case was that CP/M didn't have a 16-bit version ready to meet IBM's schedule, and that's what ultimately took them out of the running.
If you watch the documentary it’s an interview with the people who were there. There might be some discrepancy but I think the IBM guys were being honest about how it went down. The doc is on the Internet archive and worth a watch.
You get the idea that it wasn’t some brilliant business strategy by Microsoft, the deal for the operating system wasn’t that good for them initially.
Gary had some other plans and so he said well, Dorothy will see you. So we went down the three of us...
Gordon Eubanks
Former Head of Language Division, Digital Research:
IBM showed up with an IBM non-disclosure and Dorothy made what I...a decision which I think it's easy in retrospect to say was dumb.
Jack Sams:
We popped out our letter that said please don't tell anybody we're here, and we don't want to hear anything confidential. And she read it and said and I can't sign this.
Gordon Eubanks:
She did what her job was, she got the lawyer to look at the nondisclosure. The lawyer, Gerry Davis who's still in Monterey threw up on this non-disclosure. It was uncomfortable for IBM, they weren't used to waiting. And it was unfortunate situation - here you are in a tiny Victorian House, its overrun with people, chaotic.
Jack Sams:
So we spent the whole day in Pacific Grove debating with them and with our attorneys and her attorneys and everybody else about whether or not she could even talk to us about talking to us, and we left.
……….
Bill Gates:
Digital research didn't seize that, and we knew it was essential, if somebody didn't do it, the project was going to fall apart.
Steve Ballmer:
We just got carried away and said look, we can't afford to lose the language business. That was the initial thought - we can't afford to have IBM not go forward. This is the most exciting thing that's going to happen in PCs.
Bill Gates:
And we were already out on a limb, because we had licensed them not only Basic, but Fortran, Cobol Assembler er, typing tutor and Venture. And basically every - every product the company had we had committed to do for IBM in a very short time frame.
“But when members of GKN Aerospace’s response team arrived to inject a neutralizing agent into the tank to reduce the liquid’s volatility, they learned that the tank’s valves were gummed up, making the interior inaccessible, said Mr. Covey.”
They’re “triumph of the nerds”really good. Really gets to the pivotal points in business.
The story of how MS got the operating system contract told by Gates/Balmer and the IBM executives. (MS at the time didn’t have an operating system, just software)
Also includes the Apple tour of Xerox research told by Steve Jobs and some of the xerox folks.
Worth a watch.
Transcripts if you want to read: (part 2 is the IBM entering the business)
Modern PHP is pretty good. I’ve been using it for a while so it’s comfortable.
I’ve been doing so Perl maintenance lately and I miss PHP. Perl is a lot weirder than PHP. If I didn’t know C or had dabbled in Perl before I would be completely confused. There is More Than One Way to do it (the Perl rallying cry) causes a lot of confusion. The one nice thing about Perl is that it doesn’t really change anymore, and you can see where it positively influenced others.
I know areosmith, phish and the Dave Mathews band gave fan club members dibs on good tickets, though this was year ago. My friend was a huge phish fan and he’d always get a bunch of new years tickets in the 90s.
I used canvas for some Harvard extension classes 10 to 5ish years ago. It worked Ok. Work distributed, grades posted. I didn't realized so many schools used it, or that it was all schools on one instance, which seems kind of nuts.
I lost access when I left as it was tied to my work email. I downloaded a lot, but there was still some useful stuff on the boards.
I wonder what the havkers found out about me. Perhaps the class notes will be lifted to train AI, higher quality than a lot thats on the internet anyway.
I discovered one of my old school assignments ended up on some homework help website. I had never posted this document publicly and had only uploaded it to the schools work submission page. Presumably at that point it was shared with multiple third parties for plagiarism checking and such. And then was exposed to a data breach years later and ended up on the public internet.
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