If you’re interested in the history of personal computers and the software industry, Robert Scoble’s one hour show on “How Bill Gates beat Gary Kildall in OS war” is well worth watching. In an interview Tom Rolander, who worked with Gary Kildall when IBM came to talk about an operating system for their yet unannounced PC, talks about how Microsoft came to pick up the contract that set the foundation for its Windows empire, while DRI lost it’s role as the operating system standard of the early microcomputer industry.

Also mentioned is the dismissal of a lawsuit by Tim Paterson, the author of QDOS aka SCP-DOS, which was renamed IBM PC-DOS and MS-DOS by IBM and Microsoft. You can download the ruling here. Paterson had sued author Harold Evans for defamation after being mentioned in a chapter of Evans’ book “They Made America” on Gary Kildall.

On July 25 judge Thomas S. Zilly ruled that:

Plaintiff Tim Paterson has failed to provide evidence that statements in Sir Harold Evans’
chapter on Gary Kildall are provably false or defamatory. The statements in the Kildall chapter constitute non-actionable opinion protected by the First Amendment, or statements
that are not provably false. In addition, as a limited purpose figure Mr. Paterson has failed to
provide any evidence that Sir Harold Evans acted with actual malice.