I wrote 'Nuke Redmond'

From: Bill Dawson <whdawson_at_mlynk.com>
Date: Sun May 7 04:23:52 2000

-> It was thus said that the Great Bill Dawson once stated:
-> >
-> > And while I'm on the soapbox, I'll state the obvious. Bill Gates is a
-> > shrewd thief and an accomplished liar. About the only
-> original product MS ever had was BASIC. IBM screwed Digital Research
with the
-> pricing of CP/M for the PC. Gates was no small part of this.
->
-> How? Bill Gates just licensed MS-DOS to IBM for a cheaper
-> price than DR did CP/M. I can't see Bill Gates saying to IBM, ``If you
don't
-> charge more for CP/M than for MS-DOS, we'll walk.'' Bill Gates is
ruthless but not
-> stupid.

The agreement, IIRC, was that DR wouldn't sue MS for the outright theft of
large parts of CP/M used in MS DOS 1.0 (I can feel the heat of the flames
already, this was a recent topic) if IBM would offer the choice of either MS
DOS or CP/M as the OS on the PC. What Gary and DR overlooked was getting an
agreement on the pricing structure. So IBM offered both, MS DOS at $40.00
or thereabouts, and CP/M at $200.00. When Joe Customer was finished
shelling out the exorbitant bucks for the hardware where there wasn't much
choice in the price, the only savings was in choosing MS over DR. If on
the surface IBM was only interested in selling hardware, not applications,
what did it matter to Big Blue what OS was on the box, as long as they sold
the box. They certainly weren't making much in royalties on MS DOS,
considering the low price. Since Gates already knew the money was to be
made in software, whether OS or applications, not hardware, and had
publicly stated so, he would have certainly been aware enough to "help" IBM
with the competing OS's pricing structure, whether by dropping the price of
MS DOS once he knew DR's price, or possibly arranging to have IBM price CP/M
so much higher.


-> -spc (Not that I'm trying to defend him or anything ... )
Received on Sun May 07 2000 - 04:23:52 BST

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