100. The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates? The Gary Kildall Story

To celebrate our 100th episode, we’re taking a special look at one of the foundational legends of the technology industry. It’s about the man who invented the modern disc operating system (the OS) and the concept of the software platform. That man was Gary Kildall. And the question we examine in this episode is, why is Bill Gates the richest man in the world, and not Gary Kildall?

[rogermullins]

Landed here looking for more info on Gary Kildall, like several other commenters here I was inspired by watching Computer Chronicles videos. Amazing work sir. Has a 'This American Life' vibe. I'll be subscribing.

[jgassman]

I was a computer engineering student from 1994-98 and Gary Kildall's legacy was evident. Thank you for drawing attention to him, he's one that no one knows his name, but they should.

[zarjesve]

@1:30:00 "What if IBM went with Gary Kildall?" - For start, there will be no Microsofts "Embrace Extend Extinguish" which stall and almost halt progress in computer world!

[fredhensley]

Gary was a man of integrity and substance (applications vs. operating systems). He possessed the sheer technical ability and business acumen (a.k.a. Dorothy) to have chatted a much better path for us all. Had Gary prevailed over Bill Gates, we would be so much better off now...

[kevikiru]

I never thought I would enjoy the topic of Gary Kildall this much. Wow! What a history?!

[dbunds]

After listening to this podcast several times, reading a lot of other sources on the subject and thinking a lot about it, I think that the far more important fundamental question is: Why was Digital Research so chronically late in their shipment of CP/M-86? This extreme lateness is one of the primary causes of DR to fail to secure a deal with IBM because it was the catalyst for the development of QDOS. Imagine if you will CP/M-86 shipping on time in Nov. 1979. Then QDOS would never had existed per Tim Patterson's own testimony and things would have been very different. Thus Gary's real failure was not that he went "flying" i.e. failed to be present the day IBM came calling but instead that he failed miserably in shipping CP/M-86 in a timely manner, thus creating the conditions that allowed other enterprising individuals to take advantage of this. But why was DR so late? I do not know. But I do know that if Tim could put something together in 1980 basically on his own that was worth enough for Microsoft to purchase then the fact the the entirety of DR not being able to get a product out with their resources is extremely puzzling.

[dbunds]

UPDATE: The question raised by this podcast: What did Gary Kildall know and when did he know it, i.e. did Gary know that the important customers coming to his company headquarters that fateful morning in August of 1980 was specifically IBM, non-disclosure agreement notwithstanding? This is answered definitively by an interview of Tom Rolander by the Computer History Museum. At 1:23:33 he is asked for a brief history of the IBM visit and he states that after the famous call by Gates, IBM called Gary up on their own. Also of interest is a story concerning a bad experience Gary had with IBM that seems to have given him a lasting bad impression of the company.

[ebiros]

Pretty brilliant presentation.i'm not knowledgeable enough to know if everything presented here is factual, it did educate me a whole lot about the goings on surrounding this extraordinary period in micro computing. Gary Kildall will be remembered.

[vaniljapulla]

I was born in '82, but as my mum was excited about PCs and bought us first an Amstrad and a C64, then an IBM clone - I do remember DrDOS, but even back then MS-DOS was the norm. All the games worked with MS-DOS. Windows 3.1 was a huge leap for us kids, we got to play Solitare and draw with Paintbrush! :D Most games were still run under MS-DOS.

[roytofilovski]

At a minimum, Kildall should have insisted that IBM price his product the same as MSDOS. Where was his lawyer during all of this?

[bastardtubeuser]

great presentation on a rabbit hole subject, good job. its a shame gary is not around to do loads of interviews about his amazing life story. its like if bruce lee and chuck noriss met on a mountain to fight alone and now bruce is dead no one will ever know the true details and you cant trust a word chuck says.

[shandytorok]

Nice compilation, pro commentary, thanks Brian 4 the remembrance to Gary!!! F9$

[NogCube]

Imagine that he can still live in an alternative reality and that he may be the richest person in the world out there in the space somewhere.

[sandile]

My goodness, the first 30 minutes or so of this podcast sounds almost exactly like cryptocurrency right now. Wow!!!

[kevinlkoehler]

He was doing 3D graphics stuff too. Like what later was Pixar.

[smoothbeak]

Brilliant, first episode I've listened to

[johnhudgins]

Actually the reality is the Kildall was home but told the IBM people he promised his wife to take her flying and travel as it was her birthday and they would have to wait till next week and he refused to do a non -disclosure agreement until he returned.

[charmedx]

Took a few sessions to get through. But in the end a very enlightening look at the subject what showed all the information.

As for why he didn't sue after getting IBM to sell both OSs wouldn't have surprised me if they made him sign a contract that said he could no longer claim MS DOS and CPM similarities or he would be sued for beach of contract.

[PauloConstantino]

HI there. Your podcast is superb. I want to suggest that you look into hardware history as well. Things like transistor history, chips, computers, etc! There is a gold mine there to be dug out! Or Silicon mine :P

[kcinplatinumgaming]

Gary Kildall was a pioneer maybe the Nicola Tesla of computer software he created so much and had more insight i would say than Bill gates and even Steve Jobs with his insights he was the creator of the GUI (Gem) and CP/M to start with and even multitasking multi threaded operating systems a very clever man ... it was not directly his fault it seems to me it was his wife and seen the potentials of portable computers and CD disks he found all that ...