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Gary Kildall, Father of the PC OS, Finally Gets His Due

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-a-moment-too-soon dept.

theodp writes: "GeekWire reports that Gary Kildall, the creator of the landmark personal computer operating system CP/M, will be recognized posthumously by the IEEE for that contribution, in addition to his invention of BIOS, with a rare IEEE Milestone plaque. Kildall, who passed away in 1994 at the age of 52, has been called the man who could have been Bill Gates. But according to Kildall's son, his dad wasn't actually interested in being what Bill Gates became: 'He was a real inventor,' said Scott Kildall. 'He was much more interested in creating new ideas and bringing them to the world, rather than being the one that was bringing them to market and leveraging a huge amount of profits. He was such a kind human being. He was always sharing his ideas, and would sit down with people and show flowcharts of what he was thinking. I think if he were around for the open-source movement, he would be such a huge proponent of it.' Techies of a certain age will also remember Gary's work as a co-host of Computer Chronicles."

10 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. He couldn't have been Bill Gates... by Kenja · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It wasn't about the creation, but the leveraging.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
  2. The best recognition.. by ThatsDrDangerToYou · · Score: 5, Insightful
    is this: " He was such a kind human being. He was always sharing his ideas, and would sit down with people and show flowcharts of what he was thinking."

    We could use more like him. To be recognized by IEEE is great, but greater still to leave this legacy to his kids and the community.

    1. Re:The best recognition.. by sg_oneill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah, I think its wrong to put him in the Jobs, or Gates category. Jobs and Gates where merely better than average technical people but with phenomenal business skills. Kildall was only a better than average businessman but with phenomenal technical skills.

      In a sense he was more a Wozniak character, well meaning, technically brilliant, and for a while at least betting on the right horse.

      And by all accounts, a genuinely decent person.

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    2. Re:The best recognition.. by JabberWokky · · Score: 5, Interesting

      To tie them all together, I used a computer for many years that was designed by Woz, marketed by Jobs, with a expanded processor and memory made by Gates' company to run Kildall's OS (and a few others). An Apple ][+ with the Microsoft Z-80 SoftCard card, running CP/M. And I'm sure I wasn't the only one. A world capable of inventing, manufacturing, and garnering capital and sales to see that innovation become available to people requires all of them.

      I know I'd rather have lunch with the likes of Wozniak and Kildall, however. Add Ritchie and Kernighan, and that would be one heck of a table.

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  3. Re:When popularity rules by zephvark · · Score: 3, Funny

    I smell a troll

    Take a shower.

  4. I remember him for GEM by DadLeopard · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The GEM Graphic environment manager, would have been the world standard, well expect for the "Look and Feel" Lawsuit that Apple brought against it when it was released for the IBM PC and Clones. After the settlement it was so neutered as to be fairly useless! It was a dream to use in it's full implementation on the Atari 1040ST. Drag and drop and a windowed environment way before Microsoft got around to it!

  5. well, he said it was a weekend hack by samantha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I met him back in the 70s. He said that CP/M was something he hacked up one weekend out of frustration with other things available at the time or rather the dearth of much of anything. He wasn't at all impressed by having done so. He wondered why people thought it was a big deal.

    So sorry to hear that we lost him and so very young.

  6. Re: I met Gary by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The cheap solution was the rest of the market beyond Apple and IBM. It wasn't the platform with the IBM trademark associated with it. The PC initially exploited it's association with the original IBM product and then Bill Gates and Microsoft ran with it from there once they already had commanding position in the market due to someone else's trademark.

    Microsoft is ultimately the extension of someone else's monopoly.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  7. Re: I met Gary by AaronW · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually OS/2 WARP and even 2.1 included TCP/IP. The OS/2 Warp TCP/IP suite was far better than anything Microsoft had. It was basically based on BSD along with many of the tools that were supplied. I remember buying NFS for OS/2 (there were versions from IBM and Hummingbird) as well as X11 for OS/2 (before XFree86 was ported to it). Later versions of OS/2 included even more features from BSD, including sendmail and the firewall support. I remember being able to telnet into my OS/2 box long before such things were supported by Microsoft. When OS/2 Warp shipped, TCP/IP was an add-on for Windows 95.

    TCP/IP was never a 20-30K option at least from version 2.1 and later.

    --
    This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
  8. Re:Nice guys by tragedy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wozniak did not ride Steve Jobs coattails. Do you think jobs would have gotten anywhere without Woz at the beginning? He probably would have ended up as a used car salesman.