4 ms·

Didn't Windows Network stack come from NetBSD? There were many BSD contributions to Windows.. BSD386 was a direct Unix derivative I would argue.

eru 4y ago
Of course, Windows (and especially Windows NT) learned and borrowed from the Unix world. But it retains a distinct personality and lineage.
- smegger001 4y ago
  Correct me if i am wrong but isn't the NT design heavily based off of (some would say a rip off of) VMS, Microsoft having poached much of DEC's OS dev team including chief architect David Cuttler.
  - seabrookmx 4y ago
    Yes, and DOS inherited things from older DEC operating systems like TOPS10 (which IIRC was the first occurrence of using /forwardslash options on the command line).
    - skissane 4y ago
      Many are under the mistaken impression that DOS got forward slash as an option character from CP/M or from IBM. CP/M denoted options using square brackets, and IBM mainframe operating systems generally indicate options using parenthesises. (The usage of square brackets appears to be a modification of IBM's approach; I'm not sure why Gary Kildall made that change – before creating CP/M, he'd used IBM CP/CMS at the Naval Postgraduate School, which likely influenced both this option style, and also drive letters.) My own reconstruction of what I think happened (this was all before I was born, I'm just making some inferences based on what I know about the topic) – Microsoft was heavily influenced by DEC operating systems (Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote the first version of Microsoft Basic on a PDP-10). Microsoft didn't like CP/M's native option syntax, so for their development tools for CP/M, they adopted a DEC-style option syntax instead. Since many ISVs used Microsoft's development tools, a lot of third party software on CP/M ended up using the same option syntax too. Tim Paterson at Seattle Computer Products was influenced a lot by Microsoft (even before he worked for them), so QDOS/86-DOS/PC-DOS/MS-DOS ended up with the DEC/Microsoft-style forward slash as an option character. When DOS 2.0 came around, Microsoft wanted to switch it to dash/minus, for better Unix/Xenix compatibility. In support of this, they added a CONFIG.SYS setting SWITCHCHAR= to let you choose between forward slash and dash/minus, and an API (INT 21,37) to get/set that config setting at runtime. However, it was decided that the backward compatibility cost of that change was too great, so they pulled the feature from the documentation (although it still existed in the code; in later DOS versions, they disabled the ability to change it to anything other than forward slash, but the undocumented API to get the setting was never removed.)
  - pdpi 4y ago
    There is the old joke that, when you increment each letter in VMS, you get WNT.
    - smegger001 4y ago
      similarly HAL from 2001 Space Odyssey is IBM with each letter decremented by one.
      - quonn 4y ago
        And HAL is an important component of WNT.
  - jpgvm 4y ago
    Considering David Cutler was instrumental in both VMS on the VAX and then eventually Windows NT this isn't so much a rip off as a continuation.
- skissane 4y ago
  Microsoft's Unix derivative, Xenix, was a big influence on DOS 2.0, in particular the concept of directories, path name syntax, and replacing the CP/M-derived FCB API for file I/O with Unix-style file handles. That influence endures all the way from DOS 2.0 up to Windows 11. People talk about Windows NT being influenced by OpenVMS, via Dave Cutler – the influence is very obvious in some areas (e.g. asynchronous IO), but path name syntax is one area in which Windows is much more influenced by Unix than by OpenVMS (even considering warts such as drive letters, support for backslash instead of forward slash, and reserved file names such as NUL and CON.)
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Other influence from OpenVMS is how many of those API surfaces look like, when I looked into OpenVMS documentation for the first time on during my digitial archeology, somehow it felt familiar territory.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 4y ago
Yes, although it was rewritten on Windows Vista, the NetBSD is no longer part of Windows.
HeckFeck 4y ago
The Windows XP source tree contained various Unix utilities that were ported to Windows. Eg, Perl, Vim, Vi, wc, cat. Imagine if they made it into the public release.
pram 4y ago
The hosts file in Windows is still called etc/hosts which I’ve always found amusing ;P
dboreham 4y ago
Do you have a reference for that? I remember that many TCP implementations were derived from the Reno/Tahoe tape source, but I hadn't heard until now that this included NT. Iirc that work was done by or managed by J Allard.
cesarb 4y ago
Yeah, I'd say that the network stack on Windows is not an example of a non-Unix design. And there are other bits and pieces here and there that show some Unix influence (like the hierarchical filesystem). But on the whole, one can clearly see that Windows comes from a different heritage.

eru 4y ago

Of course, Windows (and especially Windows NT) learned and borrowed from the Unix world. But it retains a distinct personality and lineage.

smegger001 4y ago
Correct me if i am wrong but isn't the NT design heavily based off of (some would say a rip off of) VMS, Microsoft having poached much of DEC's OS dev team including chief architect David Cuttler.
- seabrookmx 4y ago
  Yes, and DOS inherited things from older DEC operating systems like TOPS10 (which IIRC was the first occurrence of using /forwardslash options on the command line).
  - skissane 4y ago
    Many are under the mistaken impression that DOS got forward slash as an option character from CP/M or from IBM. CP/M denoted options using square brackets, and IBM mainframe operating systems generally indicate options using parenthesises. (The usage of square brackets appears to be a modification of IBM's approach; I'm not sure why Gary Kildall made that change – before creating CP/M, he'd used IBM CP/CMS at the Naval Postgraduate School, which likely influenced both this option style, and also drive letters.) My own reconstruction of what I think happened (this was all before I was born, I'm just making some inferences based on what I know about the topic) – Microsoft was heavily influenced by DEC operating systems (Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote the first version of Microsoft Basic on a PDP-10). Microsoft didn't like CP/M's native option syntax, so for their development tools for CP/M, they adopted a DEC-style option syntax instead. Since many ISVs used Microsoft's development tools, a lot of third party software on CP/M ended up using the same option syntax too. Tim Paterson at Seattle Computer Products was influenced a lot by Microsoft (even before he worked for them), so QDOS/86-DOS/PC-DOS/MS-DOS ended up with the DEC/Microsoft-style forward slash as an option character. When DOS 2.0 came around, Microsoft wanted to switch it to dash/minus, for better Unix/Xenix compatibility. In support of this, they added a CONFIG.SYS setting SWITCHCHAR= to let you choose between forward slash and dash/minus, and an API (INT 21,37) to get/set that config setting at runtime. However, it was decided that the backward compatibility cost of that change was too great, so they pulled the feature from the documentation (although it still existed in the code; in later DOS versions, they disabled the ability to change it to anything other than forward slash, but the undocumented API to get the setting was never removed.)
- pdpi 4y ago
  There is the old joke that, when you increment each letter in VMS, you get WNT.
  - smegger001 4y ago
    similarly HAL from 2001 Space Odyssey is IBM with each letter decremented by one.
    - quonn 4y ago
      And HAL is an important component of WNT.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  Considering David Cutler was instrumental in both VMS on the VAX and then eventually Windows NT this isn't so much a rip off as a continuation.
skissane 4y ago
Microsoft's Unix derivative, Xenix, was a big influence on DOS 2.0, in particular the concept of directories, path name syntax, and replacing the CP/M-derived FCB API for file I/O with Unix-style file handles. That influence endures all the way from DOS 2.0 up to Windows 11. People talk about Windows NT being influenced by OpenVMS, via Dave Cutler – the influence is very obvious in some areas (e.g. asynchronous IO), but path name syntax is one area in which Windows is much more influenced by Unix than by OpenVMS (even considering warts such as drive letters, support for backslash instead of forward slash, and reserved file names such as NUL and CON.)
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Other influence from OpenVMS is how many of those API surfaces look like, when I looked into OpenVMS documentation for the first time on during my digitial archeology, somehow it felt familiar territory.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pjmlp 4y ago

Yes, although it was rewritten on Windows Vista, the NetBSD is no longer part of Windows.

HeckFeck 4y ago

The Windows XP source tree contained various Unix utilities that were ported to Windows. Eg, Perl, Vim, Vi, wc, cat. Imagine if they made it into the public release.

pram 4y ago

The hosts file in Windows is still called etc/hosts which I’ve always found amusing ;P

dboreham 4y ago

Do you have a reference for that? I remember that many TCP implementations were derived from the Reno/Tahoe tape source, but I hadn't heard until now that this included NT. Iirc that work was done by or managed by J Allard.

cesarb 4y ago

Yeah, I'd say that the network stack on Windows is not an example of a non-Unix design. And there are other bits and pieces here and there that show some Unix influence (like the hierarchical filesystem). But on the whole, one can clearly see that Windows comes from a different heritage.