Suit may revise chapter on tech history: Origins of MS-DOS

Suit may revise chapter on tech history: Origins of MS-DOS: "A decades-old quarrel over a defining event in computer history -- the creation of the program that propelled Microsoft to dominance -- has suddenly become a legal dispute that could lead to a public trial.
Tim Paterson, the programmer widely credited for the software that became Microsoft's landmark operating system, MS-DOS, filed a defamation suit this week against prominent historian and author Harold Evans and the publishers of his book, 'They Made America,' released last year.
At issue is a chapter in the book that calls Paterson's program 'a slapdash clone' and 'rip-off' of CP/M, an operating system developed in the 1970s by Seattle native Gary Kildall, founder of Digital Research Inc. Paterson's suit disputes that claim and a long list of related assertions in the 16-page chapter on Kildall, who died in 1994 at age 52."