6 Dec
2024
6 Dec
'24
11:28 p.m.
On Friday, December 6th, 2024 at 8:10 AM, Marc Rochkind <mrochkind(a)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.