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September 96/Features/Interview: Gordon Eubanks INTERVIEW: GORDON EUBANKS INTERVIEW: GORDON EUBANKS The story of Gary Kildall’s Great Missed Opportunity has passed being worth a lot.” into folklore. But what is the truth behind this cause célèbre? Eubanks joined Digital Research but left after two Gordon Eubanks, Symantec supremo, told Clive Akass. years. “It became clear to me that Digital Research did not have the will to win and they Gary Kildall wrote CP/M, the first were losing opportunities. So I went off and did my own thing.” mainstream desktop operating The problem was that events system. He invented the concept of had been too easy on Kildall. “He felt everything was in his a Basic Input Output System (BIOS), court, and he could do whatever the core logic which marries he wanted. This was where hardware to the operating system. Gary and I had a hard time… where we did not get on very He was a founding father of desktop well.” computing, yet history mainly recalls Disaster had nearly occurred his greatest mistake. He was the some time earlier when hard disks were introduced and man who gave away the IT industry; CP/M would only support the man who gave Bill Gates the floppies. Hardware world. manufacturers, tired of trying to get an upgrade out of Kildall, The story goes that two suits from almost reached the point of IBM had arranged to meet him at developing a rival operating system. home on a certain day in 1980. “All of a sudden Gary Kildall was off flying his plane, and realised that business was had left his wife Dorothy to do the starting to dry up because the floppy-disk systems were not talking. She balked at signing an selling. People wanted hard agreement to not disclose anything disks and high-density disks.” they told her, and showed them the Kildall finally ordered a crash program to write a CP/M door. upgrade. “When something like Nonplussed, the suits then that happens… it’s like when approached a fledgling company someone has a heart attack, they get a whole new view on called Microsoft about the small life and start to work out… But matter of developing an operating Gary never realised how close system for the first IBM PC. he came to losing his business, PCW Illustration by Nick Grant and he did not change.” The same thing happened all been an aggressive, even predatory, Within five years of having had that over again when Kildall was slow to bring Legend businessman ever since. conversation, hundreds of thousands of out a CP/M upgrade to run Intel’s new 16- Kildall, a specialist in compilers, was machines, using Z80 or 8080 processors, bit 8088 and 8086 chips. Tim Patterson, one of his tutors and a brilliant had been sold with CP/M as their an 8088 boardmaker at Seattle Computer uch is the legend, already programmer, but by all accounts was out operating system. Kildall had formed a Products, got so tired of waiting that he enshrined in for a good and easy life. He wrote CP/M company called Intergalactic Digital wrote his own operating system, called alt.folklore.computer. Only it (Control Program for Microprocessors) in Research, which he later shortened to QDOS. “Tim got frustrated, as did a lot of wasn’t quite like that, according 1973, almost as a by-the-way, to help him Digital Research, and became a people, about Gary’s attitude to this kind of the to one man who was around at develop software for the 8-bit 8080, one multimillionaire. of thing,” Eubanks recalls. the time. Gordon Eubanks of Intel’s first microprocessors. For a time, Eubanks was in direct IBM had been slow, too. It was still Sfounded Symantec, one of the biggest Eubanks couldn’t understand him. “I competition with Bill Gates, selling rival stuck in the age where a computer filled a software companies to have grown fat by remember having lunch with him one day versions of Basic to run on the CP/M room and could be used to milk its plugging the gaps left by Microsoft. He knew and he said to me, ‘I don’t know what to machines. He was still in the Navy, his owners of millions. IBM did not want to Kildall from way back in the early seventies. do with the CP/M.’ So I said, ‘You had mother was running his company from know about desktop computers and didn’t They were very different characters. better make it a business.’ And he said, ‘I her home in California, and he decided it want anyone else to know either. Eubanks was drafted into the Navy during am not sure if people will buy it.’ I replied, was time to get out. “Then Gary offered By the end of the seventies, the the Vietnam War, and stayed on to get ‘Oh Gary, come on…’.” It is now more to buy the company at a really high price. microcomputer business had become too sponsored for graduate school. He formed than two decades later and Eubanks still I think he paid ten times revenue for it in big to ignore. IBM decided it had to get in fall his first company while still a student and has shakes his head in astonishment. Digital Research stock, which ended up on the act. It could not afford the time to 122 123 PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD SEPTEMBER 1996 SEPTEMBER 1996 INTERVIEW: GORDON EUBANKS develop its own IBM representatives showed up on the pre-emptive multitasking, and its GEM model from doorstep. She was in the throes of graphical operating system was more scratch, so the preparing to go on holiday the next day. successful than early versions of decision was “That was what really caused the Windows. But the company never taken to build a problem,” says Eubanks. regained the pre-eminence it had in the machine from That, and the contrasting characters of seventies, and was bought by Novell in off-the-shelf Gates and Kildall. “The real issue wasn’t 1991. Kildall died in 1994 at the age of hardware that Gary refused to talk to IBM. The real 52, from head injuries received during a components issue was that Microsoft had a much night out in Monterey, California. and bought-in better vision for the business. Gary was These days, Eubanks regularly software. very laid-back. He did not care that much. pauses in London to brief journalists Kildall’s Digital Research was the And Bill was extremely focused and about the latest products from Symantec, obvious place to go for an operating driven.” a company he bought in 1982 from the system, hence the famous visit to the Gates did not even have an operating proceeds of his early business ventures. Kildall home. Eubanks says: “I’ve told this system at that stage. After IBM called, he Gates’ move in buying up QDOS seems story to lots of people and they just won’t promptly bought Patterson’s QDOS for to have provided something of a model, get it. All they want to get is that IBM $50,000. It was little short of a CP/M because Symantec has grown by a showed up and Gary was off flying his clone, but it was to become MSDOS and series of similar strategic acquisitions, aeroplane. The problem is that this is run nine out of ten of the world’s desktop including Central Point Software, Peter very wrong.” computers. Norton Computing and, most recently, For one thing, Kildall never dealt News of the deal spread quickly. Delrina. directly with hardware manufacturers. He Patterson rang Eubanks, warning him to As Eubanks puts it, “[Symantec’s] left that to his wife Dorothy. “Gary was port his Basic to the new operating strategy is to focus on businesses with very laid-back. He didn’t care that much. system. “I said, ‘Jeez, Tim, why is that?’ good growth prospects and the Dorothy ran the business and he ran the And he said, ‘I can’t tell you, but a big opportunity to become market leader… technical side and they did not get on.” Seattle company has just licensed it, and We use acquisitions to accelerate entry And who could have known that the IBM licensed it on to a hardware company into key markets.” PC was going to be important? “IBM was that’s bigger than anyone you can think About his early success, he says: “I just one of dozens of companies who of.’ I said, ‘Let me get this right. You are was lucky. I was in the right places at the were in the [microcomputer] business.” telling me that IBM licensed it from right times.” His last word on Kildall is: Dorothy was talking to some people Microsoft.’ Tim said, ‘I didn’t say that but “Gary could have owned this business if from Hewlett-Packard, Digital Research’s you should definitely support it’.” he had made the right strategic biggest customer at the time, when the Digital Research pioneered decisions.” Eubanks on Microsoft, Java and NCs ymantec has always remained close to Microsoft, specialising in available. It has just launched Symantec Café 1.2, the latest version Sniche applications with which the bigger company does not of its Java development environment. bother. It was there at the start of Windows 95, simultaneously Eubanks is surprisingly downbeat about Java. He describes it as a launching a 32-bit utilities suite and Norton Navigator, an enhanced well thought out attempt to reap the benefits of object-orientated version of the ’95 Explorer.
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