[Simh] Regarding "Cutler THE father of VMS" myth

[Bill Cunningham]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Clem Cole" <clemc at ccc.com>
To: "Johnny Billquist" <bqt at softjar.se>
Cc: "SIMH" <simh at trailing-edge.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2015 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Simh] Regarding "Cutler THE father of VMS" myth


> Hmm since this has deteriorated into stories and history of Dave and what
> he did.  I'll add one of mine and what I know.  Apologies to this group
> ahead of time if you do not, but I think many of you might find it amusing
> if not interesting.
>
> I was under the impression Culter built something similar to RSX for the
> PDP-10 pre-DEC (for DuPont).  At least that is what guys like Fossil, 
> Clark
> D'Elia who had worked with Dave on RSX, Paul Cantrell who had worked on
> VMS's file systems and Tom Kent on the terminal system had always said to
> me. I'm pretty sure it was the DEC sales guys that introduced him to the
> engineering teams and eventually he went to work for Roger in the "VAX SW"
> team.     I've never been completely sure of the path, I think Dave came
> late to RSX proper, although I thought he had a heavy hand in the "11M"
> implementation.
>
> I can say, in the early 1980s, I first met him at a bar in Littleton Ma
> (the old "Maui ??something??" - which is now the site of the YankeeZee
> River Restaurant) in Littleton, MA.    Clark knew I had programmed on VAX
> Serial #1 under VMS and done the TCP/IP work so was pretty familiar with
> the systems and even Dave's C compiler, but prefered UNIX and "Ritchie C."
>  Dave and I knew of each other and had actually exchanged emails
> previously but have never met in person before that night.   Clark wanted
> us to meet, so he arrange for some of the VMS guys to getgether and 
> dragged
> me along when Cutler who was at the time at DEC west working on what would
> later become Mica and had come east at that point for some mtg in Maynard
> WRT uVax IIRC.   Dave Cane (Mr. VAX 750), heard the meeting was going to
> happen and walked into Roger's office, who was later reported by I think 
> it
> was Janet Egan as having to have replied:  "Oh sh*t one of them is going 
> to
> tear a new a*shole into the other."
>
>
> Anyway, we all ended up at the bar and Clark tried to trying to start a
> food fight by turning to Dave and introduced me with the words:  "Dave 
> meet
> Clem.  He's one of the old UNIX guys and he thinks all the SW DEC built in
> the last few years sucks."  But Fossil then turned to Dave and said "When 
> I
> hired you I had a fiery red beard [he turned grey in the mid-70s], and 
> then
> turned to me and said and after you I went bald."  Truth is we got along
> fine that night and would each buy the other a beer or two.  In fact, Dave
> and I would work together a few years later on NT-OS/2 uKernel when he was
> at MSFT and I was at NCR.
>
> But that evening, I would not grant him two design issues with VMS - using
> assembler instead of BLISS [DC hates BLISS] and the file naming 
> conventions
> [which he defended as being required to be compatible with RSX and I
> replied but he wasn't]; and he would not give into the fact the UNIX had a
> command system that was in his words "random" and "unclean" in the 
> handling
> of things like errors [I understand but accept it as a cost of that's what
> happens when you have a lot of different developers as opposed to small
> controlled team and in return you get a lot of useful work from a lot of
> people].
>
> The truth is we both respected the work the other had done and understand
> why both systems were successful and useful and I think Clark was
> disappointed it did not become a shouting match.
>
> As for NT, Dave definitely lead Mica, which begat NT-OS/2 @ MSFT. 
> Windows
> was spliced into what would become NT-Windows by the time it became a
> product.   But Dave's team was responsible for uKernel portion and he will
> tell you he was influenced by CMU's Mach and what had made UNIX
> successful.  When it was still Mica, the idea was to have two user mode
> API's, one being VMS and one being UNIX with the new ukernel being coming
> between them.
>
> Clem

    That is indeed a wonderful story. So Cutler didn't "hate" Unix like I 
have alawys heard then?

Bill