Atari Fires Bill Gates

[jkolak]

Got to love this one....

"Over at Gamasutra, Steve Fulton has published a massive 23,000-word history of Atari from 1978 to 1981, encompassing '... some of the most exciting developments the company ever saw in its history: the rise of the 2600, the development of some of the company's most enduringly popular games (Centipede, Asteroids) and the development and release of its first home computing platforms.' Best quote in there for Slashdot readers, perhaps: 'Atari had contracted with a young programmer named Bill Gates to modify a BASIC compiler that he had for another system to be used on the 800. After that project stalled for over a year Al was called upon to replace him with another developer. So ... Al is the only person I know ever to have fired Bill Gates.'"

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?si ... 21/2135202

[charles]

hey thats interesting ,
not every day i hear stuff like this.....bill gates ...fired...!!!...
is so independant now ,,
its safe to say he problally worked very hard to establish himself and ibm..

and this reminds me ,
there is a movie about some computer gurus, uhmm???
"the pirates of silicon valley",,,,,,
i can't say for certain if it pertains to bill gates ,
but from what i hear it was all about the rise and fall of computer company and the struggle for $$$$ in the mid eighties,
i have not watched myself but i hear its a very good see..!!!!

charles i still truly use my micro...long live atari st!!!!!

[bullis1]

its safe to say he problally worked very hard to establish himself and ibm..

Errr... What? Bill Gates didn't work at IBM. He founded Microsoft. His DOS was made to run on IBM machines and compatibles, but he never worked for them.

Who in this day and age hasn't heard that Bill Gates is the founder of Microsoft?

[PaulB]

From what I remember reading years ago, Bill Gates approached Atari offering them a graphics interface for their OS. Atari accepted but Gates couldn't complete the GUI in time for the release date of the ST so Atari went to Digital Research that already had a GEM GUI up and running. Gates wasn't really fired but you could say he was 'off the project'. gates continued to evolve his GUI into a full blown OS which led to Windows V1.0 which IBM bought and sold with their machines. Then came Windows 1.1, Windows 2, Windows 3.0 and 3.1. The rest is history and well known.

[jkolak]

From what I remember reading years ago, Bill Gates approached Atari offering them a graphics interface for their OS. Atari accepted but Gates couldn't complete the GUI in time for the release date of the ST so Atari went to Digital Research that already had a GEM GUI up and running. Gates wasn't really fired but you could say he was 'off the project'. gates continued to evolve his GUI into a full blown OS which led to Windows V1.0 which IBM bought and sold with their machines. Then came Windows 1.1, Windows 2, Windows 3.0 and 3.1. The rest is history and well known.

That's correct. What Gates was fired for, though, was failure to deliver BASIC for the 8-bit computers. Eventually MS BASIC for Atari 8-bit was released, but too late to become the default BASIC as Atari had already developed their own BASIC, which was later built in to the XL computers.

John

[Grunaki]

Errr... What? Bill Gates didn't work at IBM. He founded Microsoft. His DOS was made to run on IBM machines and compatibles, but he never worked for them.

Watch the movie-mentary "Pirates of Silicon Valley" - the part where Gates sells the DOS licence to IBM is classic..

Gates: "We want to licence the software to you and maintain the rights to it ourselves."

IBM Dunce: "Well, the real money is in the computers themselves, not this software you speak of, so we have no problem with that.."

He also DIDN'T EVEN OWN DOS at that point - his buddy knew a guy who was writing it as a personal project and they offered him $50 Thousand for it and the guy snatched their hand off..

[jkolak]

Watch the movie-mentary "Pirates of Silicon Valley" - the part where Gates sells the DOS licence to IBM is classic..

I would love to have seen that film. Will have to look for it...

Also, I posted news about the new Atari / Bushnell movie:

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=14899

John