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

[Clem Cole]

On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 3:38 PM, Bill Cunningham <billcun at suddenlink.net>
wrote:

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


​Well, I think its like saying I hate(d) VMS or RSX.   I respect(ed) both
systems, but would prefer not use them when I had other systems that made
me more productive.   My employer today (Intel) is heavily Windows
oriented.   Windows drives me nuts.  I'm typing this on a Mac and would
probably used Linux if I did not have the Mac.   But I will use Windows
when I have too and understand why it's there.   Most of the time I can
avoid it.  But bless MSFT and Windows, it sells lots of Intel chips which
helps to keep me employed.   Same thing about Fortran.  I'm at HPC type,
and in reality Fortran pays my salary; but I don't want to have to program
using it.

IMO: While I think it bug Dave and others that people did not like his
favorite system, I think Dave understood then that UNIX was it was and VMS
was not going to replace it and the arguments were not useful (although
that did not stop them mind you when pride was on the line).   What
mattered was many large customers wanted UNIX and prefered it.  I suspect
Dave would rather use VMS, but if UNIX was selling Vaxen, and people were
not going elsewhere, Unix/Ultrix was important.

That said looking at all of UNIX, VMS source and later NT-OS/2 source, I
might suggest that Mica looked in many ways more "UNIX" than VMS as a
ukernel.  Again, IMO why is because it's model was Mach, ney Accent, ney
Rig and structurally Dave had learned the ideas that the ukernel offered
were very good and useful.   Unix has been able to embrace the ideas easily
and I do not think that would have been easy with VMS.

>From what I have understood, at the time, just as the "Gem" group in the
compiler team was doing a full rewrite, Dave too wanted a modern kernel for
DEC's future.   He needed a modern, scalable and portable VMS
implementation too and (I believe) he wanted to see DEC get back to single
core OS instead of needing multiple OS teams (that vision would never be
found).    So learn from what UNIX and family did well, at MSFT this is
called "embrace and extend."


They wrote Mica in C++ (warped a bit to look like PL/1 IMO), but at least
it was not assembler anymore.  It was made to scale and work on UP, SMP, or
NORMA hardware as well as Vax, MIPS and PRISM.  UNIX really was that
influence, at the time VMS certainly could not do that and was not going
too.   Remember when "VAX SW" is being put together in the early/mid-70s,
many commercial OS guys (particularly @ DEC) did not (yet) believe it was
possible to right a commercial OS in anything but assembler - until UNIX
(although UNIX was hardly the first - Boroughs used an Algol, and of course
GE/Honeywell and Pr1me used PL/1 and to be fair UNIX v1 was written in
PDP-7 assembler).

Clem
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