The Joel on Software Discussion Group

"Well it wasn't true that he refused to meet them, and his wife Dorothy, who was a VP, did meet with them.  There were a bunch of requirements that IBM wanted from DR that DR wasn't willing to give up, Billg didn't mind giving them up."

Now referring to the comments above how would the computing industry look different if Gary Kildall had signed with IBM?


Some people said that:

1) Microsoft wont have dominate the personal computing market.

2) Microsoft OS wont have existed.

3) CP/M would have been the popular OS and emerge as a rival to microsoft.

How can anyone know?
What if JFK hadn't been assassinated?
What if the Eagle ascent stage had failed, leaving Armstrong and Aldrin to die on the moon?

My opinion is that it just would have taken Microsoft longer to reach their position of dominance.

Everything I've heard about Kildall is that he avoided confrontation, whereas billg is known for his infighting ability.  So, eventually, Gates would have come out on top anyway because he is/was more agressive.

Macs would have taken over, PCs would have gone the way of the Amiga, and Microsoft would have gone the way of Atari after a brief run with a cool flight simulator game.

Even though BillG may have grasped the power of owning the OS early, if he had never made that OS licensing deal with IBM, how would he have had the revenue to achieve what he did?

Not getting the contract pushed DRI further into developing Concurrent CP/M and Flexos, multitasking, multi-user operating systems and real time operating systems.  But that was already happening.

The possibility is that an operating system similar to OS/2 but with a Gem front end (and so Mac like) would have been around a couple of years earlier.  It would also have had a memory partition model that was closer to that envisaged by Intel.  In that way the Cutler yank on the handbrake to get into Real mode wouldn't have been needed, real mode wouldn't have been required.

Novell would have trundled on and possibly 3Com could have provided continual competition rather than running out of steam dependant on Lan Manager.

The differences would have been greater for Microsoft, without a cash cow to milk on every Intel processor on a motherboard in the world from 1982-1994 it would not have had the cash to bankroll Windows until it was useable.

In lots of ways the industry would be the poorer, it was good that Novell had a major competitor but it was bad that it failed to compete on the desktop and so gave up the LAN as well.  It was probably poor for users as there was a hiatus of four or five years as developers and consultants played catch up and had re-develop not once but three times with the changes that were forced on them.  A CCP/M model would not have required that.

"Novell would have trundled on and possibly 3Com could have provided continual competition rather than running out of steam dependant on Lan Manager."

GEM survived until DRI was purchased by Novell and all GEM development was cancelled. Is that what the statement above is referring?.

For all of Microsoft's fault, one thing they did do is make it easy for anyone to own and use a computer as a tool (note: this is in reference to their business practices and not necessarily the quality of the software).

It's quite possible that without 'em, you're looking at a GATTACA or Orwellan style future with elite computer operators that directly interact with computers, and a separate populace that does nothing more than push "feed me" style buttons.

Er...

What future exactly do you think we're currently zooming towards there TheFrank?

Drop the "elite computer operators" and I think you've got it.

And now back to my job automating stuff.

;)

Uh...

Sorry, the glasses I wear that do all the reading and thinking for me read your name as TheFrank instead of TheDavid.

Not sure why I even feel the need to correct it.

And now back to my job automating the pushing of the Feed Me buttons so nobody has to do that either...

No I wasn't referring to Gem in the context of Novell and 3Com.

You can still get Gem there's a guy maintaining it as Open Gem.

Digital build an 8088/86 version of CP/M for IBM-PC.
You can choose between MS-DOS or CP/M 86.
But MS-DOS was cheaper, and CP/M 86 are not so
compatible with CP/M 80.
Programs must be rewriten.
MS-DOS wins, CPM/86 became DR-DOS and die...

If Kindall will have sign with IBM?
Maybe Microsoft will be turn Xenix his master product.
And don´t have sell it to SCO...