CP/M was the popular operating system that IBM wanted to license for their skunkworks Personal Computer project. But the founder of Digital Research, the company that developed CP/M, was more interested that day in going flying his plane than meeting with corporate men in navy suits. (This may be apocryphal.)
IBM turned instead to their second choice, a small company that was supplying BASIC interpreters to many 8-bit micros. The company didn’t actually have a suitable disk operating system product, but the founder knew someone who did. He made a deal to license the source code for a fixed fee and no limitations on redistribution. And that’s how Bill Gates acquired MS-DOS for $50k.
IBM turned instead to their second choice, a small company that was supplying BASIC interpreters to many 8-bit micros. The company didn’t actually have a suitable disk operating system product, but the founder knew someone who did. He made a deal to license the source code for a fixed fee and no limitations on redistribution. And that’s how Bill Gates acquired MS-DOS for $50k.