[jauntywundrkind]

I struggle like hell to imagine what the enduring lasting lessons of DOS are. It doesnt seem to have any real legacy in OS design. Not a single aspect but was copied or emulated or expanded on (although DOS in the whole was cloned purely for sale of having a DOS compatible system).

The lesson seems to be: it's a race to the bottom on price. The lesson seems to be: get lucky and have your competitor just happen to be on a trip the day IBM knocks at their door. The lesson seems to be: have a parent who sells your stuff direct the board. The lesson seems to be: take advantage of decades of now-non-existant anti-trust atmosphere to make the world's biggest computer company seek outside OS. DOS itself? I struggle to think of anything remarkable at all. Maybe the availability of very cheap BASIC on-ramps for enthusiasts.

[lproven]

> Not a single aspect but was copied or emulated or expanded on

The business computing world still, to this day, largely runs on Windows, and Windows NT was built on the foundations of DOS: it bootstraps from a DOS filesystem, as UEFI still does in 2024, and it could be installed from DOS. It implements an API designed on DOS for a DOS GUI and to this day supports DOS-compatible filenames.

All the core system folders in Windows 11 still have DOS-compatible names, from `SYSTEM32` to `SYSWOW64`.

DOS itself was emulated by DR-DOS, FreeDOS, PTS-DOS, and other OSes.

> it's a race to the bottom on price.

Always was, still is. Why do you think Linux does so well? It's not technical merit!

> have your competitor just happen to be on a trip the day IBM knocks at their door.

Absolutely cast-iron lie, and you should be ashamed of yourself for repeating it.

[flohofwoe]

> Windows NT was built on the foundations of DOS

AFAIK Windows NT was mainly influenced by VMS (which Dave Cutler worked on before NT). The DOS-isms were mainly coming in via the Win95 side and for backward compatibility reasons, but I bet everybody on the NT team hated those requirements ;)

> Absolutely cast-iron lie, and you should be ashamed of yourself for repeating it.

Not the parent, but it's at best a good urban legend and not much different from "Gary Kildall was not interested". Do you have any first-person accounts that paint a different picture?

[lproven]

> AFAIK Windows NT was mainly influenced by VMS (which Dave Cutler worked on before NT).

It had three parents: OS/2, DOS and VMS. However, MS could use code from 2 of them but not from VMS. I've blogged about this more than once:

https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/67492.html

https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/54464.html

> The DOS-isms were mainly coming in via the Win95 side

Nope. Not true, and you have the timeline backwards.

NT was released in 1993, 2 years before Win95, and only the 2nd version of NT, 3.5, supported VFAT long file names.

NT did not support Win95B's FAT32 until its 5th release, Windows 2000.

> backward compatibility reasons, but I bet everybody on the NT team hated those requirements

No, I don't think so. NT could be installed on top of DOS, via the WINNT.EXE setup program. (Something I urged in OS/2 communities, but they didn't understand the need or usefulness.)

https://networkencyclopedia.com/winnt-exe/

NT could dual-boot with DOS, even in the same partition in early versions. It could also dual-boot with Win9x.

This level of interop was hugely important and useful and really helped the new OS gain adoption. It was not some reluctant bolt-on.

> a good urban legend

No, it isn't. It's a horrid calumny against a good and brilliant man.

> not much different from "Gary Kildall was not interested".

Also utter nonsense.

> Do you have any first-person accounts that paint a different picture?

TL;DR version.

Dr Kildall's wife, Barbara McEwen, was DR's lawyer. She negotiated with clients and suppliers, not the CEO who was a programmer.

IBM wanted an NDA which DR was unwilling to do. She said no. Remember DR was the industry giant in microcomputer OSes at this time, and IBM didn't have an offering at all.

Kildall was flying to visit an important client; this wasn't some accidental joyride.

This lie about Kildall literally drove him to drink and his early death. Stop repeating it. It's not funny or clever. It's an evil, vindictive lie.

Tom Rolander was the other passenger in the plane. Is his testimony good enough?

Listen to him describe the flight he was on.

https://youtu.be/bLVbSjDq0DE?si=Ig9KksWWiJG3KDFn&t=1025

A much longer interview:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2008/12/18/cassidy-theres-more-t...

Video interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VREZ6Zx_usc

Transcript:

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/201...

[flohofwoe]

Well that's a lot more hard info than I was hoping for, thanks for taking the time!

[lproven]

Thanks.

The thing is, the computer industry is now old enough it has a lot of folklore and legend: stuff that "everyone knows" and repeats.

But many of the people involved are still alive and you can just ask them.

And there are some really nasty people in this industry -- such as Bill Gates, or Larry Ellison -- who tell lies about others and to others, and then some of those lies catch on and everyone repeats them.

These lies that people share destroy lives. Don't repeat stuff you heard. Just Google it. It's easy to find the truth.