Comment by acomjean
4 hours ago
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.
From “Triumph of the Nerds” tv transcript:
https://www.pbs.org/nerds/part2.html
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.
Eh, basically all facts in this story are disputed by all sides. Aside from general gist that there was some meeting that didn't go well.
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.