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They Made America: From the Stream Engine to the Search Engine

CP/M v QDOS Battle Still Rages 25 Years Later
By Search News Desk
Article Rating:
July 30, 2007 10:30 AM EDT
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 7,033
Sir Harold Evans has survived a libel action brought by Tom Paterson, the guy who wrote QDOS, the mother of PC-DOS, MS-DOS and Windows.

In his 2004 book "They Made America: From the Stream Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators," Evans dredged up those old contentions - originally made by Gary Kildall - that Paterson had ripped off Kildall's CP/M operating system.

Paterson sued but a judge the other day decided that Evans' "opinion" doesn't rise to libel and that his statements were neither "provably false" nor malign. He dismissed the case.

Paterson has always claimed that he never saw Kildall's CP/M code, then the microcomputer standard, but that his Quick and Dirty Operating System was meant to be like CP/M so 8080 programs could run on the next-generation 8086 chip.

Evans regards Kildall, who died in 1994, as "the true founder of the personal computer revolution and the father of PC software."

Published July 30, 2007 – Reads 7,033
Copyright © 2007 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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Search Engine News 07/30/07 11:08:57 AM EDT

Sir Harold Evans has survived a libel action brought by Tom Paterson, the guy who wrote QDOS, the mother of PC-DOS, MS-DOS and Windows. In his 2004 book 'They Made America: From the Stream Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators,' Evans dredged up those old contentions - originally made by Gary Kildall - that Paterson had ripped off Kildall's CP/M operating system. Paterson sued but a judge the other day decided that Evans' 'opinion' doesn't rise to libel and that his statements were neither 'provably false' nor malign. He dismissed the case.