> DEC cancelled it. Cutler and his team left and went to Microsoft. MS didn't know what to do with this élite group so it gave them OS/2 3 to finish. Based on

> DEC cancelled it. Cutler and his team left and went to Microsoft. MS didn't know what to do with this élite group so it gave them OS/2 3 to finish. Based on the Showstoppers book -- it's more like: Bill Gates knew the days of Windows 3.x were limited, and needed a new, next generation operating system. Gordon Bell convinced Bill Gates to call David Cutler, of VMS/DEC fame (Bill Gates was always impressed with DEC as an engineering company). Cutler was like, "what, come work for that dinky company that makes crappy Office docs and a shitty OS? Psscht." Bill persisted, saying it'll be a brand new OS that he'll lead. Cutler insisted only if he got to bring his DEC team (like, 200+ people) and basically got whatever he wanted. Bill obliged. NT development started in '89. Such a pivotal moment in computing history. If I ever got to chat to Bill Gates, I'd ask him what he was more proud of: a) getting Cutler on board for NT, or b) orchestrating the backward-compat mindset that set up the Windows 3.11 -> Windows 95 -> Windows NT -> Windows XP transition.