4 Feb
2018
4 Feb
'18
11:06 a.m.
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(a)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.