>Another candidate could be IBM's choice of Bill Gates over Gary Kildall to supply the operating system for its personal computer. The damage from this decision is still accumulating at breakneck speed, with StuxNet and the OOXML perversion of the ISO standardization process being exemplary bookends for how far and wide the damage spreads.

First off, IBM did put CPM/86 on the PC and sell it. Many people bought it. We had it at work. The reason CPM/86 failed relative to PC-DOS was simple - CPM/86 cost nearly $300 and PC-DOS cost $40.

There wasn't anything discernably better about CPM/86 at the time, either its programming API or its user interface, and people did the sensible thing and bought the less expensive operating system. It was a no-brainer.

As to the idea that CPM/86 was somehow a secure operating system, I haven't heard that before. It's patently false.

What killed CPM/86, plain and simple, is it was way, way overpriced. I have no idea who made that decision.