[TUHS] Interesting post about Microsoft and UNIX

[segaloco via TUHS]

On Friday, December 6th, 2024 at 8:10 AM, Marc Rochkind <mrochkind at gmail.com> wrote:

> I just came across a 1995 post from Gordon Letwin, early Microsoft employee and lead architect of OS/2, about the history of OS/2. There are a few paragraphs in it about Microsoft and UNIX. Here's Letwin's post:
> 
> https://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post
> 
> And the UNIX-related paragraphs:
> 
> It's extremely hard to do development work on an operating system when someone else controls the standard. "Control" in this case is a matter of public perception. For example, Microsoft was once very big in the Unix world. In fact, we considered it our candidate for the future desktop operating system, when machines got powerful enough to run something good. We were the worlds biggest seller of Unix systems. DOS was, when we first wrote it, a one-time throw-away product intended to keep IBM happy so that they'd buy our languages.
> 
> The UNIX contracts were all done when Bell Labs was regulated and couldn't sell Unix into the commerical marketplace. So although they wrote it and were paid royalties, they couldn't develop it in competition to us. But after a few years that changed. Bell was degregulated and now they were selling Unix directly, in competition to us! They might sell it for cheaper than we had to pay them in royalties! But that wasn't the real killer, the real killer was the Bell now controlled the standard. If we wrote an API extension that did X, and Bell wrote an incompatible one that did Y, which one would people write for? The ISVs know that AT&T was a very big company and that they'd written the original, so they'd believe that AT&T controlled the standard, not MS, and that belief would then define reality. So we'd always just be waiting for what AT&T announced and then frantically trying to duplicate it.
> 
> Bill Gates knew, right away, that there was no strong future in Unix for us any more. Fortunately at that time, DOS was taking off and we were learning, along with everyone else, about the power of standards. So the primary OS team - the Unix guys - joined with the secondary OS team - the DOS guys - and the earliest versions of OS/2 were born. (This was before IBM came on board, so it wasn't called OS/2!)
> Marc Rochkind
> 

Regarding the Microsoft/UNIX connection, while AT&T was central in the UNIX world, Microsoft is famous for their volume, I find myself wondering if Microsoft ever considered working *with* AT&T as an angle.  Would this have run afoul of their relationship with IBM?  I understand it that AT&T was trying to posture themselves as an IBM competitor in the hardware market in the ATTIS era, so I could see this factoring into Microsoft pulling out rather than espousing an angle of "If you can't beat them, join them."  Again though, given their volume, I could see an alternate timeline where Microsoft approached AT&T and AT&T was more than willing to leverage a relationship with Microsoft given the uptake of Xenix.  AT&T would eventually plunder Xenix for bits leading up to SVR4 anyway, granted this was many years later with more perspective.

Another angle I've pondered on too is if Microsoft would've been amenable to that sort of thing but AT&T wouldn't have.  They had just settled a huge anti-trust case.  Pairing themselves with the single largest distributor of UNIX may have been to scarily close to cornering a market for their comfort, so maybe even if Microsoft had considered that, I could see trepidation on AT&Ts part regarding high-profile integration with an operation like Microsoft at the time...

Cool stuff though, I've been studying this point of history a bit lately WRT the UTS/386 connection brought up recently.  In a similar "don't mess with IBM" vein, it's had me wondering if Intel management would've been sketchy about using UTS for anything since Amdahl was a prominent IBM competitor.  I get the impression that industry players that managed to curry IBMs favor somehow then had to tiptoe carefully around anything that might smell of engaging with competition.  Just my view in hindsight though, as always, I wasn't there, I'm just fascinated with the conditions that lead to the world I live in :)

- Matt G.