CP/M author and personal computer pioneer Gary Kildall was flying his plane to visit a customer in Oakland when IBM came visiting in 1980, and flew back in time to take part, as planned, in afternoon negotiations that fell apart because IBM was being completely unreasonable:
IBM did not want to pay royalties on each copy of the operating system that it sold. It wanted to rename the product, which would upend Digital’s marketing plan. And IBM wanted Digital to sign a nondisclosure agreement that protected IBM’s intellectual property but left Digital’s extremely vulnerable.
Cassidy: There’s more to the story of software pioneer Kildall – SiliconValley.com