Gary Kildall
Comment from E-mail
I found your web site through a series of events:
1) I read an article about Gary Kildall in Dr. Dobb’s about a year or so ago
2) After the “finding of facts” in the Microsoft trail came out, there was generally two thoughts on the matter; Marketing people said “Ohh.. so it’s OK to be successfull, but don’t be too successfull etc. etc.” while Engineers generally would say that Microsoft is a completely amoral company. Being an engineer myself I wrote a letter to ComputerWorld in Denmark, who printed my letter
3) I was approached, and challenged, by a co-worker about my views, and we started talking about who invented “Windows”. I told him that a) Windows was created by RankXerox’s PARC, b) it was succesfully tested and implemented by Apple and that c) Gary Kildall designed a lot of the stuff that Microsoft called MS-DOS.
4) I revisited the Dr.Dobb’s article and saw that Gary (may he rest in peace) was “pissed” that Steve Jobs was known as Mr.Apple while You are known “only” by engineers.. So I started looking and found your site!
best regards..
Woz
That’s kind of a short analysis of things, but in that many words is about as accurate as you can get in regard to the foundations of Windows. Don’t forget that the first versions of Windows were built on top of DOS, a product that Microsoft didn’t even create.
I, as many others, wish that Gary Kildahl had been in the place of Bill Gates. He was a very nice person and wanted the computer industry to proceed. I doubt that he would have pursued the monopolistic courses that Microsoft travelled.