From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: wobblygong@gmail.com (Wesley Parish) Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2018 18:06:47 +1300 Subject: [TUHS] Windows roots and Unix influence (was Re: Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >From what little I know, Dave Cutler was wanting to work on a VMS (Next Generation) at DEC, but couldn't manage to get management to agree, so when the possibility of doing a VMS (Next Gen) at Microsoft came up, he jumped for it. At least that's what I read back in the late 90s. I've forgotten where I read it, unfortunately, so unless someone can come up with a source for it, best treat it with a pinch of salt. Wesley Parish On 2/4/18, Nemo Nusquam wrote: > On 02/03/18 19:37, Dan Cross wrote (in part): >> The design of the original NT kernel was overseen by Dave Cutler, of VMS >> and RSX-11M fame, and had a very strong and apparent VMS influence. Some >> VAX wizards I know told me that they saw a lot of VMS in NT's design, >> but that it probably wasn't as good (different design goals, etc: >> apparently Gates wanted DOS++ and a quick time to market; Cutler wanted >> to do a *real* OS and they compromised to wind up with VMS--). > > I recall that Cutler wanted a portable OS and had a cli version running > on MIPS first. Eventually, Gates ordered a GUI "bolted on" and things > went bad. > >> It's true that there was (is? I don't know anymore...) a POSIX >> subsystem, but that seemed more oriented at being a marketing check in >> the box for sales to the US government and DoD (which had "standardized" >> on POSIX and made it a requirement when investing in new systems). > > Indeed, but it was functionally useless in that it could interact with > the NT system. It always reminds of the time that NT obtained FIPS 140 > Level 1 but with no network. (Had NIST not re-organised their website, I > would link to the certificate.) > > N. >