As reported by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Tim Paterson, who
is acclaimed worldwide as the man who originally came up with the
software behind MS-DOS, has filed suit against former newspaper
editor Harold Evans, his collaborators Gail Buckland and David
Lefer, and his publishers Little, Brown & Co and the Time
Warner Book Group.
At issue is a chapter in Evans' recently published book "They
Made America".
The book discusses great US inventors, and in one chapter
credits the late Gary Kildall, the technical wizard behind former
industry pioneer Digital Research Inc, with developing CP/M, an
operating system of which, it says, Paterson's QDOS program was a
"slapdash clone".
In the early 1980s Paterson sold QDOS to Microsoft, which was
then a tiny software company. Microsoft improved the software,
renamed it, and licensed it to IBM.
Paterson, who later went to work for Microsoft, has since
retired. On Monday he filed suit in defence of his reputation.
"It's really a matter of the truth coming out and being widely
understood, and if it takes a trial to do that, then maybe a trial
can help, but it's not necessary," he told the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer.
Evans intends to vigorously defend the action, says the
report.
