Time Magazine recently released an issue devoted to movers and shakers of the 20th century. I found an interesting little item on Bill Gates:
Interesting, isn't it? "..together they designed the breakthrough software to run the first microcomputers..."
A few points:
1. Gates was kicked out of Harvard for stealing computer time-- he didn't "drop out".
2. Gary Kildall designed "DOS", or CP/M as it was then known. Bill Gates and Paul Allen did NOT. When Kildall and IBM were unable to reach an agreement on the use of CP/M for the new IBM PC, IBM went to Bill Gates. Gates realized that a version of CP/M-- called "QDOS" from Seattle Computer Products could do the trick, so Paul Allen licensed it and he and Gates turned around and licensed it to IBM. Kildall later discovered that QDOS was a virtual copy of CP/M, sued, and then settled out of court with IBM.
History is so enamored of material success that it begins to re-write itself. Suddenly, not only is Gates greedily, madly, insanely rich-- he must deserve it in some way!
2. The software they didn't create-- DOS-- was as much of a "breakthrough" as the Edsel. It was a piece of dated, inadequate code that couldn't even address memory above 640K for more than 10 years. The "breakthrough" was the Macintosh OS from Apple, which Gates shamelessly pillaged for Windows, and which itself stole from the Xerox lab at Palo Alto. Breakthrough? Geosworks was a breakthrough, and unlike Windows, it worked. Breakthrough? The 80386 chip was breakthrough. But Windows still runs as if it's on a 8088-- it can't multi-task or multi-thread. Breakthrough? On the same machine, Linux hums and 0S/2 throbs.
3. Microsoft software "humming"??? "Humming"???? "Humming"????? The person who wrote this little blurb was insane. Was Time soliciting new advertising from Microsoft at the time this little piece of ..... was written?
Let us pray that "history" has more regard for the truth than Time Magazine or Bill Gates.
