[TUHS] Dave Cutler recollection about Xenix

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Friday, 20 October 2023 at 16:27:40 -0700, Skip Tavakkolian wrote:
> This might be interesting to some. It is a piece of a longer conversation
> between Dave Plummer and Dave Cutler (RSX11, VMS, WinNT)
>
> https://youtu.be/9K3eMzF6x28?feature=shared

This really doesn't seem to have much to do with Xenix.  Yes, he
mentions it briefly, talking about licensing, but that seems to be
all.

FWIW, Xenix preceded DOS as a Microsoft operating system.  From my
personal timeline:

6 September 1980: At Euromicro 80, a conference in London, I heard a
  	    	  presentation about Xenix from a Microsoft person
  	    	  whose name I no longer recall.  It was supposed to
  	    	  have been from Bill Gates, but he had a last-minute
  	    	  cancellation.

December 1980:    I bought a pair of S-100 boards and an operating
	 	  system called 86-DOS from an obscure company in
	 	  Washington state, USA.  I spoke on the phone to a
	 	  Tim Paterson, who assured me that 86-DOS had a
	 	  bright future.  The rest is, of course, history.

June 1981: 	  Byte magazine carried an article from Microsoft
     		  about Xenix.  This was presumably written no later
     		  than May 1981.

August 1981:	  IBM released the PC.

I've done a bit of searching and found this link:
https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/microsofts-xenix which
tells me that Microsoft (really their SCO) licensed 7th Edition Unix
in 1978 and brought out a product 2 years later.  That seems
plausible.

Does anybody have a programme for Euromicro 80?

More of my recollections at
http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-sep1980.php#21

Greg
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