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To: wireplay

Not exactly.

Cutler wanted to re-write VMS in C to make it more portable to target new architectures quicker. Cutler hated Unix, but loved the idea of a better OS implementation language than Bliss, and he wanted to re-host VMS on some of the hot new RISC chips that were coming of age in Unix workstations in the early 90’s. It is difficult to tell younger people what the prevailing notions of systems programming were in the 70’s - and that IBM and DEC (and others) had their own home-rolled systems programming languages for their OS projects. DEC had Bliss-11, Bliss-32, Common Bliss, etc, just as IBM had PL/S, etc.

DEC, never missing an opportunity to shoot themselves in the feet where workstations and PC’s were concerned, sufficiently pissed off Cutler that he left. Part of the reason this happened was that DEC was a Massachusetts company. If you weren’t at “The Mill,” you simply were not politically connected. Cutler was at DECwest in Seattle, and just not “in the loop.” So he just wasn’t able to market his idea to the increasingly sales/marketing managed DEC in the early 90’s and left the reservation.

That said, while the IO architecture of WinNT shows VMS parentage, the security aspects of VMS were almost all left behind. VMS had real security. Windows has very little of any of VMS’ security architecture, and the results show this.


60 posted on 04/07/2010 6:05:35 AM PDT by NVDave
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To: NVDave
"VMS had real security. Windows has very little of any of VMS’ security architecture, and the results show this."

Amen. I work with maintaining both VMS and Windows systems. If I had all VMS systems I could be out of a job, they never fail, never need updates, never get hacked, and do exactly what their told. Windows....well....
74 posted on 04/07/2010 7:23:06 AM PDT by jaydubya2
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To: NVDave; wireplay
That said, while the IO architecture of WinNT shows VMS parentage, the security aspects of VMS were almost all left behind. VMS had real security. Windows has very little of any of VMS’ security architecture, and the results show this.

This could be due to the fact that mid-way through production Bill Gates did a "stop the presses" and had Cutler dump the APIs meant for NT and make a 32-bit version of the Windows 3.1 APIs to run on NT instead.

104 posted on 04/07/2010 1:21:32 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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