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A comment on CP/M Creator Gary Kildall's Memoirs Released as Free Download. Parent comment

Re:CP/M Creator Gary Kildall's Memoirs Released as Free Down... by WalterBright on Friday July 18, 2025 @11:48AM (#44606101)
I remember the early IBM PC days. PC-DOS was $40. CPM/86 was $240. Both were available, people simply picked the cheaper one. I used both, and there was nothing better about CPM/86.

Due to inflation, this is like $113 vs $679 today. It was a no-brainer to buy MS-DOS instead. Kildall clearly was a businessman wanting to make money off of it.

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Re:CP/M Creator Gary Kildall's Memoirs Released as Free Down... by whobre on Friday July 18, 2025 @12:48PM (#44606917)
It was IBM who set the price. According to Kildall’s right-hand Tom Rolander, they were shocked when they saw the price difference.
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Re:CP/M Creator Gary Kildall's Memoirs Released as Free Down... by WalterBright on Friday July 18, 2025 @02:32PM (#44608227)
> It was IBM who set the price

Not what I heard at the time - IBM accommodated what Kildall wanted. Kildall could have sold it separately at a competitive price.

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Re:CP/M Creator Gary Kildall's Memoirs Released as Free Down... by whobre on Friday July 18, 2025 @02:46PM (#44608363)
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10271725...
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Re:CP/M Creator Gary Kildall's Memoirs Released as Free Down... by WalterBright on Friday July 18, 2025 @03:46PM (#44609012)
The date on it is 2016. 33 years later. I don't find that particularly convincing.

BTW, I've read a lot of computer histories, and I often find errors in them. This is why professional historians try to use contemporary sources as much as possible.

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