On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 12:00 PM, Paul G. Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > James E. Henderson wrote: > >> Even before DOS, Micro-Soft had a BASIC interpreter they developed from a >> public domain research project into proprietary software using "borrowed" >> time on a mainframe system. Their BASIC ran under the CP/M operating system >> developed by Digital Research, a company Micro-Soft soon destroyed. >> > > The story goes that Bill Gates stole BASIC from someone in a university he > attended. So, apparently, M$ didn't event write any of their versions of > BASIC. > > Wish I could find the link I once had showing the history of M$ products. > I don't recall about BASIC, but I saw an episode of either Biography or Modern Marvels about how Gates paid something like $50K for QDOS. They interviewed the guy he bought it from. That guy said that he was glad to get 50K and it never occurred to him to ask for some stock in the company at the time. He admitted that, had he been a bit quicker and smarter, he was pretty sure they would have given it to him.
RD -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
