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Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

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Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#71

Post by mschaef »

indigodaddy wrote: post #70
saul_goodman wrote: post #40

"Microsoft's internal project name for the new OS was OS/2 NT, because Microsoft's intention was for the new OS to succeed OS/2 yet retain the OS/2 API as its primary interface." Right... There's another reason why it was originally called OS/2 NT: IBM had hired Microsoft to co-develop OS/2 with them before Windows NT development had begun (as early as 1985). The reason for a resemblence to OS/2 with the name and API…

Wouldn't that have been against contract/illegal (or whatever terminology) ?

At least on the IBM side, they were careful about IP rights.

Summer of 1995, I had an internship (as a tester) on IBM's OS/2 LAN Server Enterprise team in Austin. This was well after the IBM/Microsoft 'divorce', but IBM's LAN Server product still had large volumes of code written by Microsoft and still displayed a Microsoft copyright message alongside the IBM copyright.

At that time, one of several other initiatives at IBM was a longer term project to remove all the Microsoft code from LAN Server. To accomplish this, they divided their developers into 'Clean' and 'Dirty' groups, where cleanliness was defined as not having ever seen the Microsoft code. It was then only the 'Clean' developers that could contribute new replacement code.

(The 'Enterprise' project was also interesting in and of itself. To help make the product more scalable, IBM was replacing all of the default directory/etc. services with a new version of DCE they were also developing for OS/2. 22 years later, it all seems pretty archaic, but it was fun at the time to be a bit involved.)

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#72

Post by pjungwir »

wrs wrote: post #68
pjungwir wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone tell me what is so great about SotNM? (It even won a Pulitzer.) I read a bunch of computer history books last year, and these were all more interesting IMO: - John Gernter, The Idea Factory - T.R. Reid, The Chip - Stephen Levy, Hackers - Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late - Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning - Susan Lammers, Programmers at Work (Actually I read Levy & Lammers a l…

SoaNM is an extended portrait of a single product development process/team under severe competitive pressure. The specific technology being developed isn’t the point (though it has to be explained for context) — it’s an attempt at capturing some archetypal characters and narrative of how technology is developed. It’s sort of like Silicon Valley , except instead of satirizing the outrageous nonsense that takes place i…

Just wanted to say I really appreciated this answer and it does let me see the book in a new light. It's interesting how many of the others I listed are not in that kind of competitive environment!

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#73

Post by yuhong »

squarefoot wrote: post #55
Analemma_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A persistent rumor is that Microsoft bought Winternals partly because Russinovich knew the guts of Windows better than a lot of their own engineers did.

According to the Wikipedia article, it looks like more of an embrace and extinguish move, at least regarding the utilities sources and Linux development. "However, since the Microsoft acquisition, none of the utilities currently available are accompanied by source code, and the Linux versions are no longer maintained or available. Some of the coding tricks used were based on the Windows Native API (NTAPI), which was…

I know about that one where the source was taken down. My favorite is Skype however where they used to use SYSENTER directly and read your BIOS using NTVDM: https://www.pagetable.com/?p=27

Not a bug in Skype, but still interesting: http://archives.miloush.net/michkap/archive/2007/11/21/64566...

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#75

Post by hfdgiutdryg »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #21
swagtricker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't copy directly, they just re-implemented from memory. I worked for Digital right out of college at the "DEC West" site off 520. A number of my co-workers REALLY hated Microsoft. Swore up & down they had colleges who had seen NT source code when they started working together with Microsoft on "Wolfpack" server clustering that they were using the exact same terms & constants (e.g. structs for system values w…

Reminder that MS paid off Wang for the stolen OLE technology and that they stole from Stac / Stacker Technology also. They are better behaved now...

they stole from Stac / Stacker Technology

Did they really? I thought MS just implemented their own version of the tech and was accused of violating patents. Did they actually steal IP?

Reading the Wikipedia article, it's not really clear what happened. Looks like MS review Stac code during licensing talks, but there's no mention of accusations of code theft. Then there's discussion of patent violation lawsuits and payoffs going both directions.

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#76

Post by hermitdev »

WorldMaker wrote: post #53
EdSharkey wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the NT Kernel is "Doing Linux better than Linux", that's a fascinating statement, because the NT Kernel is also running Win32, UWP, and all of its own chores at the same time. What's the Linux kernel doing? ;P Microsoft, the former juggernaut, would say "Linux, who?", and then proceed to throw their sales and marketing weight around. > a testament to the underlying NT kernel, because the NT kernel doesn't care,…

> Microsoft paved a gilded path for application development that points AWAY from the Windows platform. Yes, there is novelty and a definite technical achievement there that one can appreciate. But I choose to focus on the motives rather than the technical achievement, and I am disturbed by what I perceive is Microsoft's capitulation in the consumer software/platform arena. Most paths support two-directional travel.…

I've been using WSL since it was first released on the Insider Fast Ring. It's been great. Sure, its had it its problems, but the team is really responsive to issues filed on github. Ive had all of my WSL issues fixed and usually in a new build in 2-3 weeks after filing.

WSL has also been a savior in that I no longer need a Linux VM at home. Which is "great" because virtualization support (at least for me) has been broken for months. I can't even boot my desktop with Intel virtualization enabled in the BIOS.

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#78

Post by teh_klev »

squarefoot wrote: post #55
Analemma_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A persistent rumor is that Microsoft bought Winternals partly because Russinovich knew the guts of Windows better than a lot of their own engineers did.

According to the Wikipedia article, it looks like more of an embrace and extinguish move, at least regarding the utilities sources and Linux development. "However, since the Microsoft acquisition, none of the utilities currently available are accompanied by source code, and the Linux versions are no longer maintained or available. Some of the coding tricks used were based on the Windows Native API (NTAPI), which was…

Hmm...random person on the internet adds citation free conspiracy theory with the description of the edit as:

"Describing the non-availability of source code since the Microsoft aquisition. Under 'Source Code and Technology' header (my experience as a developer)" [My emphasis in italics]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sysinternals&diff...

The reality was that only a handful of the less interesting of these utilities came with source code:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060829135539/http://www.sysinte...

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#79

Post by GeekyBear »

squarefoot wrote: post #55
Analemma_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A persistent rumor is that Microsoft bought Winternals partly because Russinovich knew the guts of Windows better than a lot of their own engineers did.

According to the Wikipedia article, it looks like more of an embrace and extinguish move, at least regarding the utilities sources and Linux development. "However, since the Microsoft acquisition, none of the utilities currently available are accompanied by source code, and the Linux versions are no longer maintained or available. Some of the coding tricks used were based on the Windows Native API (NTAPI), which was…

I'd say the grandparent comment is correct when he says that "Russinovich knew the guts of Windows better than a lot of their own engineers did".

Russinovich was on the team that re-architected Windows from the ground up for the modern era.

>A few weeks ago in Los Angeles, Microsoft technical fellow Mark Russinovich -- absolutely the world's leading authority on Windows performance and architecture -- took time to explain to developers attending PDC 2009 in Los Angeles exactly what [MinWin] is. In summary, it's a way to graft onto Windows some semblance of the architectural layering it should have had, if its architects in the 1980s had any foresight into how Windows would be used thirty years later. It enables current and future Microsoft developers to evolve new configurations of the operating system, without having to rewrite core services or worry about breaking dependencies between those services and upper-level APIs.

https://betanews.com/2009/12/02/mark-russinovich-on-minwin-t...

Now he's in charge of the technology nearest and dearest to the Microsoft CEO's heart, Azure.

Re: Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)

#80

Post by sytelus »

pjungwir wrote: post #43
EamonnMR wrote: post #3

For a detailed account, there's always _Show Stopper!_ by G. Pascal Zachary which is a shot at writing a _Soul of the new Machine_ style book about Microsoft during the creation of NT. If that sort of story entertains you, I recommend it.

Can someone tell me what is so great about SotNM? (It even won a Pulitzer.) I read a bunch of computer history books last year, and these were all more interesting IMO: - John Gernter, The Idea Factory - T.R. Reid, The Chip - Stephen Levy, Hackers - Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late - Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning - Susan Lammers, Programmers at Work (Actually I read Levy & Lammers a l…

I'm actually in your camp :). Reading SotNM wasn't so much more interesting for me and I'd exactly same thought why this book is so much talked about. May be its clever title? The thing is that I've seen this story played out few times over during my career and I invariably leave feeling "ok, so what's new? I could have written that book too.". May be its my lesser ability to appreciate art and leaning too much on consuming just facts. On the other hand I found Showstoppers amazing, gripping and very informative. The scale is very different and that kind of landscape isn't experienced by everyone frequently.
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