I don’t remember anyone saying or writing “eighters” and “sixers” back then.

The last line is the most interesting, "In October 1980, Microsoft's Paul Allen contacted Seattle Computer Products and expressed interest in reselling 86-DOS. The first version of 86-DOS licensed to Microsoft was 0.3. In July 1981, just a month before IBM PC was announced, 86-DOS was sold to Microsoft and renamed to MS-DOS."

IBM reached out to Microsoft sometime in 1980 about an operating system, so SCP would've had at least 8 months to look into why Microsoft wanted their DOS before selling it entirely to them.

Did Microsoft resell 86-DOS to anybody before changing the name to MS-DOS? Did SCP make any effort find out why Microsoft wanted their DOS?

It's interesting...M$ is very sleazy in this, especially the way it turned out. Tim Paterson was clearly a great programmer. The really interesting person to me is Gary Kildall though, who I think invented a lot of the underpinnings of doing things with "microcomputers" and seems to have been a really great guy. Unfortunately, "business" is not about being nice (or having the best product). Gates has been a minor obsession of mine over the years.....I'd like to see him make good on all the promises he's made to give away his wealth. There's a book on him I think is interesting called "The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire". I mean he's smart, smarter than me, but I don't think he's as smart as he thinks he is, or necessarily even doing that much good in the world. Some good, but a lot of trying to micromanage things he doesn't know much about.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160503170006/http://www.paters... this may be a later-in-life snapshot of Tim Paterson's work as of 2016 which is very impressive. He has/had a blog you can see here: https://web.archive.org/web/20180711012545/http://dosmandriv... (entry is from 2011). I would put a lot of credence into his account of the days of 86-DOS, the IBM PC and so on.