[magoon]

Little-known fact: Windows of today is an entirely different OS than early DOS-based Windows because Microsoft took ownership of the 386-based “OS/2 3.0” codebase it jointly developed with IBM, forming the foundation for Windows NT 3 which all modern Windows is based on. This gave them the huge head start in having a modern enterprise-grade operating system that allowed them to dominate the market.

[cmrdporcupine]

I don't think that's the case; Cutler's NT has VMS-esque foundations, not OS/2.

[pickle-wizard]

Windows NT was originally going to be OS/2 NT. Due to the architecture of NT, it could support many different APIs.

Due to the success of Windows 3.0 and the lack of OS/2 success, Microsoft wisely decided to expand the Windows API to the Win32 API and have it be the default API.

The book Show Stopper, has a good account of the early days of NT.

https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Mic...

It is interesting read.

[sedatk]

Original NT contained an OS/2 subsystem layer too, like WSL today. It allowed running of OS/2 1.x apps.

[temac]

WSL is vastly different from the old-school NT subsystems. Both in the technology and in the result. And rightly so, because while SFU&co was in some way more integrated, it effectively was a separate platform from anything else, and who want to support that? Arguably the OS/2 subsystem did not have this problem because the environment/ecosystem to support was way smaller, and it was making existing binaries made for this system work. So on that last point, yes WSL is similar to the OS/2 subsystem; but it could not have been like that in SFU because Linux was not seen as a serious competitor at the time (and well, it actually was not...); and the price to pay now that co-evolution did not happen is a more segregated environment.

[p_l]

Indeed, there's no relationship between OS/2 and NT core, other than historic naming. NT is a cleaner, OO-style reimplementation of many core concepts behind VMS, to sometimes funny extent.

The programming API for use by userland started out as OS/2 though.

[nickpsecurity]

Russinovich claims it was an OpenVMS clone and upgrade with some convincing evidence:

https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/windows-nt-and-vm...

That gave them a huge lead in developing a server-grade OS. They probably just used OS/2 for the OS/2 part that ran on top of it. Fast forward to today, the result still isn't robust as its predecessor in cluster configuration or the AS/400 Microsoft ran on before using their own product. They did show how much better VMS could've been as a desktop... by dominating on the desktop. :)

[mcguire]

I didn't work for Microsoft, but I don't believe that Windows NT and OS/2 Warp had much significant in common, other than starting as a nominal "OS/2 3.0". The relationship between IBM and MS had fallen apart before 2.0 was released.

[chiph]

Yes, the "OS/2 3.0" was a marketing/naming thing, and was dropped when it became obvious that OS/2 wasn't going anywhere in the market.

[jacquesm]

There were some allegations that Cutler did a bit of a Levandowski on DEC. Or maybe it should be that Levandowski did a bit of a Cutler on Google.

Anyway, they settled out of court as long as MS promised to port Windows to DEC's Alpha.

[meddlepal]

Eh, there's a big difference between the two. Levandowski basically stole files from Google and gave them to Uber. Cutler just transferred his knowledge of building VMS to building Win NT. I suspect that's why it was settled out of court because the case was much much weaker that Cutler had stolen something tangible from DEC.

[jacquesm]

I'm not so sure about that. DEC may have simply decided to settle because fighting MS in open court would take a long time and deplete them of cash they needed very much (we all know how they ended up), Alpha was their hail-mary pass and having NT on Alpha could have strengthened their position.

[p_l]

Cutler didn't stole files, as they would be pretty useless. But DEC had feathers ruffled because Cutler uprooted a team he picked for his attempt to do a modern rewrite of VMS, which Digital refused to do.

And it was a good team.

[dagenix]

Citation?

[jacquesm]

Wikipedia pages on NT, DEC, the Alpha microprocessor and Microsoft's general legal strategies would be an excellent starting point.

[Gibbon1]

Friend of mine worked for a company that had a TCP/IP stack for VMS. He said they were asked how hard it would to port it to NT. The answer was trivial.

That said I think there is a difference between re-implementing APIs and stealing sources.

[p_l]

During early days of NT, if you wanted a port, you filled in a form and entered partnership where you were responsible for your system-specific code and MS cooperated with you.

Majority of NT/alpha work was done by team at DEC, later Compaq.

[pjmlp]

Another little know fact that I only discovered this week while listening to the coding after work podcast, is that some of the multitasking effort from DOS 4 (which apparently went nowhere), was actually integrated into OS/2 efforts.

[happycube]

That was a totally different DOS 4, which only surfaced relatively recently. (And the shipped versions apparently weren't fully featured either)

[pjmlp]

The shipped 4 versions were a consequence of the project's failure.

Like almost everyone else I kept to 3.3, totally ignoring 4.

Afterwards I actually ended up using DR-DOS 5 for a while, until MS-DOS 6 came out.

[k__]

Yes, I heard that too.

Apple and MS basically bought their current incarnations of their respective OS at some point in the past.

[mattkevan]

Microsoft bought the first incarnation of their OS as well, licensing QDOS to become MSDOS.