Talk: Microsoft Windows NT
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There are a number of mistakes regarding the history of MS-Windows in this and related articles. First up NT, was NOT based on OS/2 v.3 which was released a few years after NT. Nor was OS/2 writen by Microsoft, it was a joint IBM/Microsoft project to produce a mature OS for the home PC market, just do a search for a famous video clip of Bill Gates in 1989 cooing over how OS/2 is going to be the OS of the 1990's. It was only after he saw the sales figures for a semi workable GUI environment that he realised selling vapour ware would be more profitable than a joint mature & working product which he'd have to share with IBM, who's engineering skills well deserved. To this end Mr Gates had his people do a universal text-processor change of the source code for OS/2 ver. 1.2 (it may have been 1.3, but I think it was 1.2) replacing the tag 'DOS' with 'WIN'; recompiled, and called that Windows-NT version 1.0 . This was the reason that NT at first 'could' run OS/2 programs, because they couldn't stop it from doing so for the first half dozen releases. You must remember OS/2 1.x was a 16 bit OS, IBM re-wrote from the ground up as a pure 32 bit OS for ver. 2.0 which had the Windows 3.0 'emulator'; which was easy as 90% of the Windows code was written by IBM code cutters under contract & that contract which gave IBM access rights was the reason that IBM also wrote bug-fixes for MS-Windows 3.0 & 3.1; however, Microsoft took IBM to court to prevent IBM from releasing the fixes & claiming IBM had no rights to any of the Windows code. The court case was bogus but MS kept in in the courts from 1992-1995 when it of course became meaningless.
Basicaly, Windows NT is the Microsoft version of OS/2.
MS-Windows95 on the other hand was a Desktop system mimicing the OS/2 Desktop system - complete with weaknesses as well as strengths- sitting on top of MS-Dos v.7 The modern Microsoft Windows is a Microsoft version of the OS/2 Desktop manager on top of a Microsoft version of OS/2. And OS/2 was a fine OS for its time, and for its market; but it nor anything based from it is NOT suitable for todays network environment.
I see no reason for editing the foregoing other than to fix the mis-spellings. The article is substantially correct in its analysis of Microsoft's game-plan. sjc
I'm no MS fan either, but I don't like the sneering tone in which this article is written. The analysis is indeed correct, but could be described in a somewhat more neutral way
I don't know the origins of NT well enough to write even a good stub article. I simply neutralised the comments that existed before, and took out the BSoD reference entirely --Colin dellow
IBM didn't "produce" OS/2; Microsoft did. It was released as Microsoft OS/2 1.0, a complete operating system, entirely produced by Microsoft. IBM bought it, improved upon it, and released it under their name later. My impression at the time was that MS used it as something of a "testbed" for how to write an OS, then pawned it off to IBM and started over with NT. Internally, most of the MS team who produced OS/2 were the same folks who produced NT (For example, the OS/2 component test team directly became the NT component test team, which was where I spent my brief employment at MS). --LDC
As I recall it, it was a joint venture between the two of them. I'm sure each side would claim it did the lion's share. I recall that significant amounts of IBM code went into OS/2, including in particular the graphics system. There was plenty of disagreement, because IBM wanted it to fit into their SAA architecture, while Microsoft wanted to keep compatibility with the Win16 GDI. In any case, I know specifically that OS/2 versions 1.3 and 2.0 were released under both Microsoft and IBM brands. That simply could not have happened if IBM just bought it later. The schism happened after OS/2 2.0; IBM went on to release OS/2 3.0 and Microsoft released NT 3.0. That's why there was no NT 1.0 or 2.0
I'm sure you're right about IBM being more involved; I used Microsoft OS/2 1.0, but I didn't join MS until after the team had moved to NT, so I can't speak to the details in between. I can, however, state with some confidence that the reason the first release of NT was called "3.0" was to synchronize its version number with that of the currently-popular Windows 3.0. By the way, if you have an old copy of NT 3.1 lying around, you'll find the email addresses of the team, including "leecr", in the easter egg. --LDC
When did Microsoft start copying the BSD Unix code into Windows NT? Was it first in W2K or before that? -- mike dill
Although I don't have it direct from Cutler, I hardly knew him and he knew me even less, I am as certain as I can be that the VMS => WNT ploy was intentional. Cutler was fond of puns and word play and worked a number of jokes into RSX, where I worked with him. See Talk:RSX-11 for some examples that are verified out of my own experience and some indications as to his personality. He was a profane and sarcastic individual who felt unappreciated by DEC and was glad to go to Microsoft. It would be absolutely like him to rub it in. So no, the VMS=> WNT thing isn't verified, but I know it happened. Ortolan88 20:47 Aug 4, 2002 (PDT)
NT also has several different flavours not mentioned here, I think. I know that Terminal (Server) Edition also exists for NT 4.0. Advanced Server and Server exist in Windows 2000. Windows 2003 has at least Enterprise Edition. Jdstroy 03:07, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)
