[TUHS] Windows roots and Unix influence (was Re: Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!)

[Wesley Parish]

>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 <cym224 at gmail.com> 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.
>