Q&A: CZI-I 7 Kildall

BY PAUL FREIBERGER have in your windowing system? Senior Editor We're working with the CP/M library. We currently have about 20 applications ary Kildall is cofounder and that seem to be the most popular in town. chairman of the board of Digital Those all work with Concurrent CP/M and G Research, Inc. (DRI), of Pacific will work in windows. Grove, California, one of the largest personal- software companies. What about the highly rumored The firm is best known for developing the project called Monarch? CP/M , which helped We sent out, with VIP, a demo establish the personal-computer software program called Monarch. There's more to industry. During the past two years, it has it than just a demo, though. There's a lot of begun selling a variety of programming code there. That's all I can say publicly. languages. More recently, DRI has dropped hints about getting into the has made a major commit- application-software business. ment to multiuser operating systems with XENIX. Do you have plans that What is your view these days on the go beyond MP/M [DRI's multiuser industry? Gary Kildall, DRI's chairman of the board operating system]? .Now that Il3M has entered the micro- I think we're going to see the evolution computer market, to survive you either it and have been fairly effective. of Concurrent CP/M in that direction. It's have to turn 90" away from IBM and do more advanced than MP/M. The limitation your awn tljng, or you have to do exactly What about DR Logo on the new IBM is not the structure of the operating what IBM is doing. The companies that PCjr? system .btlt the limitations of the are jumping on the PC bandwagon but I'm sure we'll have a version that will hardware. aren't doing exact look-alikes are going to operate with [the PCjr] in rather short have problems. order. Is it frustrating in general to feel that Portables and battery-powered ma- you are pushing the hardware beyond chines are areas that haven't been covered Integrated software and operating its means? by the IBM PC at all. Another area we're environments such as the Lisa and I think the major frustration is that looking at is developing software for Visi On are in fashion this year. Will there's a bandwagon effect that we've things like the Godbout [CompuPro] DRI have a product in this area? seen throughout this industry ever since it machines, which are basically at the We have two things. Under Concurrent started. It's not like the large-computer minicomputer end of the market. CP/M, we have a windowing system, industry, where there's a lot of evaluation which we'll show at COMDEX, that not of hardware and software technology. In Why has shifted only windows but allows concurrent win- the old days you could come up with a from its traditional practice of work- dows. The system actually runs programs technically superior hardware and soft- ing behind the scenes with manufac- with application code in separate windows ware product, and that would be the turers to selling directly to retail simultaneously. We have PC-DOS running determining factor. But in the microcom- stores? under Concurrent. puter industry, the driving force is not so It's not a shift; we've been augmenting Second, in Europe and Japan we've much the technology as how many people what we've been doing. In the retail end, released beta-test copies of VIP (Visual have jumped on your bandwagon. In my there's more opportunity, but software Information Processor). VIP is a standard- estimation, it's unfortunate people are packages like Logo, for example, will sell ized interface for applications written in forced to ignore technological break- better to OEMS [original equipment the C language, and for that reason is throughs and put their efforts into market- manufacturers]. portable to various machines. The inten- ing and brightly colored packages. tion there is to provide a machine- Is Logo available? independent operating system, as a front Is your network ready? It has been available for almost a end for applications, that allows you to do At COMDEX, we'll be demonstrating month. We've shipped 4000 copies in four menu selection in a standardized way. It DR Softnet. It's a tremendous improve- weeks. has not been active in the U.S. yet. In ment over CP/Net. It will be compatible Europe, they've got to do their own with any of our products. The number of Did you develop DR Logo? applications, in many cases. VIP runs on users it can handle is virtually unlimited. I worked on it for a while. In Japan, 280 processors, on the IBM PC, on 8086 Sony has an 8-bit version of it. We'll be re- machines, on VAX [a DEC minicomputer], Are you still having fun? leasing a generic 8-bit version (I don't on Lisa. I think it runs on 22 machines. Oh yeah, a lot of fun. I love talking to know the exact date). DR Logo is written manufacturers about new technology, in C, aild we've done some work tailoring What kinds of applications will you about areas that we'll get into. I Infoworld Volume 5, Number 47 109