1970 to 1979: Computers and Software Begin Creating Wealth - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 142

The original name was an attempt at humor that was not uncommon in the era,
as shown by the 1975 creation of a journal originally called Dr. Dobb's Journal
of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics and Orthodontia . Both the company and the journ-
al changed their names when their ideas started to be taken seriously. Dr. Dobb's
evolved into a respected technical journal and has a website that is still widely read
by software engineers.
Digital Research created the famous control program for microprocessors (CP/
M) operating system that was used on many computers running Intel chips. For
several years, it was the dominant operating system for computers that used the
Intel 8086 and 8088 chips.
It is the stuff of legend that IBM originally asked Digital Research to develop
the operating system for the IBM personal computer in 1980. For one reason or an-
other, Digital Research declined, which allowed Microsoft to create both the IBM
disk operating system (DOS) and, later, Microsoft Windows. One possible reason
is that Gary Kildall did not want to sign the IBM nondisclosure agreement, but
there have been different stories about why Digital Research declined IBM's offer.
Note
It is interesting that when first approached by IBM, Bill Gates re-
ferred IBM to Gary Kildall of Digital Research as a professional
courtesy. When IBM was rebuffed, Microsoft got the contract.
Digital Research later built a competitive operating system for the IBM PC
called DR DOS that competed head to head with MS-DOS. Some computer com-
panies offered both. However, Microsoft gave such good licensing terms to com-
puter manufacturers that included MS-DOS on every machine sold that sales of
DR DOS dried up. This led to an antitrust suit against Microsoft in 1994 and an-
other in 1996.
When Microsoft developed Windows, the original DOS application was under
the covers. However, the Digital Research DR DOS was not supported. Indeed,
one of the claims in the 1996 antitrust suit was that Microsoft detected the pres-
ence of DR DOS and caused system crashes to give the impression that DR DOS
was unstable. Microsoft paid $150 million to settle the 1996 suit and a condition
of the settlement was that evidence from the suit be destroyed.
Eventually, Microsoft expanded into the world's largest software company,
while Digital Research drifted along until being acquired by Novell in 1991.