Memoirs of the CP/M creator released:

“Our father, Gary Kildall, was one of the founders of the personal computer industry, but you probably don’t know his name. Those who have heard of him may recall the myth that he ‘missed’ the opportunity to become Bill Gates by going flying instead of meeting with IBM. Unfortunately, this tall tale paints Gary as a ‘could-have-been,’ ignores his deep contributions, and overshadows his role as an inventor of key technologies that define how computer platforms run today.

Gary viewed computers as learning tools rather than profit engines. His career choices reflect a different definition of success, where innovation means sharing ideas, letting passion drive your work and making source code available for others to build upon. His work ethic during the 1970s resembles that of the open-source community today."

https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-his-own-words-gary-kildall/

#ComputerHistory #CPM #PersonalComputing #RetroComputing

In His Own Words: Gary Kildall

Gary Kildall was a pioneer of personal computer software. He wrote programming language tools, including assemblers (Intel 4004), interpreters (BASIC), and compilers (PL/M). He created a widely-used disk operating system (CP/M). He and his wife, Dorothy McEwen, started a successful company called Digital Research to develop and market CP/M, which for years was the dominant operating system for personal microcomputers. Thousands of programs were written to run under it, and a million or more people might have used it.

CHM
@toxi thanks for this. i would have totally missed it otherwise. i was surprised and glad his kids chose to acknowledge his alcoholism. it’s not a pleasant subject, but was a major part of his life leading to his death.

@toxi Of course many of us know Gary K's name. Some of us (including myself) got to work (in my case only a little bit of work) together.

I have a retrospective wish that those of us who had been working with early Unix might have nudged CP/M to use a simple LF as a line ending marker rather than CR+LF.

@toxi “Computer Chronicles” is why I know him. The spirit of that program and of the “public good” of computing is what I would rather have now.