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How Big Is VMS?

(vmssoftware.com)
77 points rbanffy | 1 comments | 03 Apr 25 18:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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markus_zhang ◴[03 Apr 25 23:54 UTC] No.43576868[source]▶
David Cutler is one of my heroes. I think he only worked on the first version of VMS, but his expertise of OS design and implementation is probably second to few.

Does anyone know whether he is still working in Microsoft? What does it feel to work with him?

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vaxman ◴[04 Apr 25 18:14 UTC] No.43585947[source]▶
He brought down the empire by committing the ultimate offense: walking across the street and taking the additional money. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their careers, millions more disrupted because of his selfish act. In the 9th Circle will be at least your hero, RMS of GNU and Vint of PPP and Carly of "That Face."
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markus_zhang ◴[04 Apr 25 20:16 UTC] No.43587183{3}[source]▶
Can you please elaborate? I get that he brought maybe a couple of dozens of people from Prism to Microsoft, but I can't see why that brought down DEC, especially it was DEC who paused Prism.

I also know that some Prism code was used in NT but again I hardly see why that brought down DEC.

That could be the cause, if DEC had some competitive hardware or software projects, but none that I know so far. Please share your knowledge with us.

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1. vaxman ◴[17 Apr 25 18:09 UTC] No.43720324{4}[source]▶
DEC failed because Corporate America perceived that the Chief Architect of VMS had created a futuristic version for Microsoft that ran on commodity hardware.

He should have convinced Ken Olsen to let him port VMS to commodity hardware and gone back to DECWRL to try again later if Ken refused, but instead he built it for Billy and Balmy who were guaranteed to (and, in fact, did) use it to destroy the lives of every DEC employee and every industry worker that had specialized in DEC's proprietary (but incredible) systems, also setting back the progress of mankind a couple of decades because NT turned out really terrible compared to VMS, giving rise to Linus' science project born out of the pages of a book on operating system theory written by an academic with no real world experience compared to the Chief Architect of VMS, RSX11, RT11, etc. (If there is no Hell, he's home free. If we make hell on Earth, then for him, it must be knowing that WSL exists.)