. . . being a savvy businessman is a con man? There's loads to criticize about MS in the 80s and 90s, but buying DOS fair and square and then building an ecosystem around it was just a good business move. The stuff they got sued and almost broken up over is the sketchy part.
The point that he's a con man is that he signed a document with IBM to supply an OS when he had none. Of course in retrospect he was "smart" to go around and buy one, but in fact he was promising IBM something he didn't have and in an alternate universe he could be sued for that.
If I order a new car, it may well not exist yet. The deal is that there will be a car on hand at some agreed upon date. I don’t think Gates did anything more illegal than the analogous car deal. More risky, perhaps, but that’s another thing entirely!
It's unethical to sell someone something if there are hidden risks. You wouldn't knowingly order a car from a company that tells you they know how to make cars but doesn't actually have the experience.
Maybe IBM was informed and understood the risk, but from what I've read about it Gates was less than forthcoming about what Microsoft actually had.
IF you order a car from an unknown company, you might get lucky and it turn out to be Lamborghini in 1963 but it also might turn out to be Aptera Motors in 2004.
However, Microsoft knew that a small company named Seattle Computer Products had developed an operating system similar to CP/M called QDOS, for Quick-and-Dirty Operating System. Microsoft suggested to IBM that QDOS could work as the IBM PC’s operating system. IBM asked Microsoft to license and further develop the operating system, which led to the formal contract on November 6, 1980. After the contract was signed, in December 1980 Microsoft would license the QDOS operating system to begin development of the IBM PC version.
