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Digital Research Superseded

Digital Research
KindCompany
Founded1974
Defunct1991
StatusSuperseded
FoundersGary Kildall
FieldSoftware
Sourcewww.cpm.z80.de ↗

Kildall's company — CP/M ran the entire 8-bit business world, and DR-DOS later out-featured MS-DOS. The legend of the IBM PC contract lost to Microsoft is half myth; the outcome was the same.

Created by Gary Kildall
Acquired by Novell
Created CP/M
Notable people Gary Kildall

Kildall founded Digital Research in 1974 to sell CP/M, the first hardware-independent microcomputer OS — 200,000 machines ran it by 1981. The famous story of Kildall 'going flying' instead of meeting IBM is exaggerated (a licensing dispute over flat-fee vs royalty is the documented cause), but Microsoft got the contract and history turned.

DR-DOS (1988) out-featured MS-DOS technically and lost anyway. Novell bought DRI in 1991; the code ended up at Caldera, then open-sourced in pieces.

Sources

  1. cpm.z80.de/
  2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Research