The woman whose life was the inspiration for the hit ’80s movie “Flashdance” lost her bid in court Monday for a copyright interest in the film, which grossed more than $150 million at the box office in the United States.
Maureen Marder, the former construction worker by day and exotic dancer by night depicted onscreen by Jennifer Beals, released her interest in the project for $2,300 shortly before the film hit theaters in 1983. (Full story at the SF Chronicle)
$2,300 out of $150M … too bad. But a deal is a deal. Just like the deal Bill Gates made with Tim Paterson to buy his QDOS operating system for a grand total of $50K in 1980.
The small fact that Gates and company forgot to mention is that they already had a deal with IBM to develop the next generation Operating System, to be later known as MS-DOS. Still, the real loser in this deal is not Paterson, but Gary Kildall, whose CP/M was the foundation for QDOS.
On second thought, I take it back. The real loser in the deal was IBM, that allowed Gates to keep the rights to DOS and licensed it on a per-copy based royalty instead, essentially “creating” Microsoft, the Monopoly. They did not have a Deal Architect to advise them. ( A funny coincidence that on the day I talk about Flashdance, Vinnie quotes the Dire Straits).
Update (6/14): What a timing! Read Scoble’s piece: Oh, and my brother wrote MS-DOS.
This must be Dire Straits week, read Jeff Nolan here.
Finally, a flashback to Flashdance (should the embedded player not work, watch the video here)
I’m at the 
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