Leor Zolman wrote the BDS C compiler for CP/M. He was perfectly suited to the era, open, friendly, had no idea what he was doing but made great things.
Here's an email? from him in 1982 regarding his compiler package, available from Lifeboat, a once-significant distributor:
Date: 09/04/82 11:00:03
From: LEOR
Re: update policy
Simply, my policy is that ANYONE who EVER pays real money for BDS C, purchased ANYWHERE, is perfectly entitled to copy anyone else's newer version with my blessings. Note that NO ONE should EVER have to go to Lifeboat for updates...PLEASE tell your friend to join the user's group so he can get the newsletters and CHEAP updates. You should join and do likewise, if you haven't already!
And here's a bit of (tech) history he wrote in 2002, years after BDS C was a viable product, but for a recent final release.
This requires some back knowledge that if you are a 21st century programmer and don't know, isn't flattering. To me it's the opposite, and you will ahve to make the effort to conjure that 1974..1982 microcomputer world -- when they, we, were coding from scratch, chip datasheets, on hardware designed from scratch, from chip datasheets, all with a mission to make computing available to everyone. EVERYONE.
Reinventing the wheel was not only allowed de facto as it always is, but encouraged. We can do better! In spite of the omissions and lack of (compiler) education Leor wrote a very functional C compiler perfectly suited to the time; the binaries for the two-pass compiler are 15K and 20K bytes.
I think rewrites from scratch, of entire systems, is a good idea. This corporate mode of huge code bases patched and patched creates bloat, not spareness. It didn't used to be this way. And doesn't have to continue.
https://www.inglevale.com//README.txt
tom jennings
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2026-10-14 22:20:40 UTC
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"content": "Leor Zolman wrote the BDS C compiler for CP/M. He was perfectly suited to the era, open, friendly, had no idea what he was doing but made great things. \n\nHere's an email? from him in 1982 regarding his compiler package, available from Lifeboat, a once-significant distributor:\n\nDate: 09/04/82 11:00:03\nFrom: LEOR\nRe: update policy\n\nSimply, my policy is that ANYONE who EVER pays real money for BDS C, purchased ANYWHERE, is perfectly entitled to copy anyone else's newer version with my blessings. Note that NO ONE should EVER have to go to Lifeboat for updates...PLEASE tell your friend to join the user's group so he can get the newsletters and CHEAP updates. You should join and do likewise, if you haven't already!\n\nAnd here's a bit of (tech) history he wrote in 2002, years after BDS C was a viable product, but for a recent final release.\n\nThis requires some back knowledge that if you are a 21st century programmer and don't know, isn't flattering. To me it's the opposite, and you will ahve to make the effort to conjure that 1974..1982 microcomputer world -- when they, we, were coding from scratch, chip datasheets, on hardware designed from scratch, from chip datasheets, all with a mission to make computing available to everyone. EVERYONE.\n\nReinventing the wheel was not only allowed de facto as it always is, but encouraged. We can do better! In spite of the omissions and lack of (compiler) education Leor wrote a very functional C compiler perfectly suited to the time; the binaries for the two-pass compiler are 15K and 20K bytes.\n\nI think rewrites from scratch, of entire systems, is a good idea. This corporate mode of huge code bases patched and patched creates bloat, not spareness. It didn't used to be this way. And doesn't have to continue.\n\nhttps://www.inglevale.com//README.txt",
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