Who did Bill Gates steal DOS from?

Instead of doing the OS themselves (as they had said), they went to a neighboring company who was working on a direct rip-off of CP/M (that wasn't that good a rip-off either). This company was Seattle Computing and the product was QDOS (Quick & Dirty Operating System). MS bought all the rights for $50,000 (or $40K - $100K depending on who you talk to), and with a few changes the work was complete. Microsoft had, for a song, IBM-DOS and MS-DOS 1.0 (the same products, but different names).

http://www.mackido.com/History/History_DrDos.html

First answer by ID1173602229. Last edit by ID1173602229. Question popularity: 16 [recommend question]