before stallman gives his typical sendoff, this thread is not actually about paul allen

theres already a paul allen thread, this one is about the history of intel.

when someone mentioned the sort of comment stallman usually makes about purveyors of non-free technology, i couldnt help thinking "the real paul allen died in july 1994." of course i mean gary kildall. maybe thats giving kildall slightly too much credit, he made a number of his own problems that cost him in industry. i didnt know he was a computer science instructor in the navy.

but i thought this sendoff was pretty interesting for what it said about intel: http://www.atarimuseum.com/articles/kildall.html

"The 4004 was Intel's first microprocessor and the first in the world. It was programmable, handled 4-bit words and contained all of 2,250 transistors. Intel, at the time was primarily in the memory IC business, and created the 4004 as a custom project for one customer. When the customer wanted to renegotiate the price Intel asked that they give up their exclusive rights to the device. Intel introduced it in November
1971. Much to Intel's surprise the device was an instant success. Engineers began designing it into a wide variety of applications such as scales, traffic light controls, musical instruments, washing machines, printers, and more Intel soon realized that 4004 system designers needed software development support. Gary was hired as a consultant to create a programming language for the device. Gary created PL/M (Programming Language/Microprocessor) to run on an IBM 360 computer and generate executable binary code that was then burned into the ROM memory of the 4004 system."

if accurate, this is the history of the entire x86 ecosystem. like microsoft, intel didnt even invent it!

"Intel, at the time was primarily in the memory IC business, and created the 4004 as a custom project for one customer. When the customer wanted to renegotiate the price Intel asked that they give up their exclusive rights to the device."

considering that free software is all about giving up exclusive rights to things, its worth mentioning (if the account is accurate) that intels entire success as a microprocessor manufacturer began as a lucky move to get someone else to share their plans with them.

kildalls personality didnt jibe with ceos, and after microsoft (and/or ibm) colluded to cut him out of the game (which im not putting entirely on microsoft and ibm, kildall was pretty demanding of companies that were larger than his was) paul allen let bill gates run the show, which he obviously regretted later. (i read a little of the paul allen biography, but im not sure if i put a lot of stock in it.)

note that the tech press was fairly quiet about kildalls passing. you can find him on old episodes of the computer chronicles https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles?and%5B%5D=kildall&sin=&sort=-reviewdate%26tab%3Dabout%26morf%3Dcollection%26morf%3Dcollection%26morf%3D-creator%26morf%3Dyear but im not expecting a huge sendoff for paul allen either.