Welcome!

Open Source Authors: John Ryan, Rebel Brown, Yeshim Deniz, Liz McMillan, Robert J. Williams Jr.

Related Topics: Search

Search: Article

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
Reads:
 6,791
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 6,791
Copyright © 2007 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

About Search News Desk

SYS-CON Media's Search Developer's Journal (search.sys-con.com), is the first and only global publication to present the hottest timely topics on the merging search engine companies, search optimization and search engine marketing industry, and all related articles, feature and news stories for search technology professionals.

Comments (1) View Comments

Share your thoughts on this story.

Add your comment
You must be signed in to add a comment. Sign-in | Register

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.

Most Recent Comments
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.