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Your story reminds me of when Microsoft acquired Hotmail in the '90s and they tried migrating from FreeBSD & Solaris onto Windows NT/IIS. Having the world's lar

• natnatenathan 2y ago
  Ha, I worked on that project. That drove a lot of good requirements into Windows that set us up for web based services (eventually)
  • DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
    > Windows that set us up for web based services (eventually) ...and then .NET and SQL Server started shipping for Linux.
    • chupasaurus 2y ago
      There are 2 decades between those 2 points, .NET was -4 y.o. at the first one.
    • tharkun__ 2y ago
      SQL Server is really Sybase tho, which was always capable of running on UNIX. Can't say much more, but I worked on a huge (internal) Sybase ASE on Linux based app (you've _all_ bought products administered on this app ;) ) way back (yes, pre-SSD, multi path fiber I/O to get things fast, failover etc.) and T-SQL is really nice, as is/was ASE and the replication server. Been about 20 years tho, so who knows.
      • icedchai 2y ago
        I used to work at a Sybase shop in the late 90's. It was way nicer to work with than Oracle!
      • p_ing 2y ago
        SQL Server uses NT and Win32 APIs, so the SQL team built a platform independent layer. Meaning NT and Win32 is still used by SQL on Linux. It’s pretty cool tech. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/blog/2016/12/16/sql-server-on-linux-how-introduction/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/blog/2016/12/16/s...
      • pimeys 2y ago
        I worked with SQL Server a bit, writing a Rust client for it back in the days. The manual is really good, explaining the protocol clearly. That made it really easy to write a client for it. Can't say the same for Oracle...
      • pjmlp 2y ago
        Only if you are speaking about SQL Server 7 and earlier, meaning around 2002. Microsoft SQL Server has long stop being Sybase SQL Server, and works on Linux by making use of Drawbridge. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/blog/2016/12/16/sql-server-on-linux-how-introduction/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/blog/2016/12/16/s...
        • tharkun__ 2y ago
          Of course, that's fair. I guess wording wise for my comment, the "Hah, they didn't actually write that themselves, they just bought the Sybase rights to everything license" got the better of me :) To be fair again, from what I hear, SQL server at Microsoft did some nice things on top of Sybase but the base, T-SQL, is just nice overall and by itself. I really want to like Postgres (and I do) but some of the awesome things I had with actual Sybase ASE 20+ years ago, Postgres still does not have. And that was a piece of software that had those features I loved for 10+ years prior to when I started working with it. The app we're talking of here was 15 years old when I worked on it 20+ years ago and it's probably still around and very probably still uses Sybase ASE (tho the actual app was converted from Smalltalk to Java ;) I also later on had to use Oracle and had the same "WTF? You can't do that?" experience :shrug:
  • p_ing 2y ago
    Are you free to expand upon your role and perhaps some of the actual tech/fixes that made it back into Windows?
  • Thaxll 2y ago
    Like IIS running some part of the code in the kernel? ( http.sys ) :x
    • p_ing 2y ago
      It has its advantages… but wasn’t done until Svr 2003. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/get-started/introduction-to-iis/introduction-to-iis-architecture#hypertext-transfer-protocol-stack-httpsys https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/get-started/introducti...
      • hulitu 2y ago
        > It has its advantages Yeah, the advantages (RCE) were copied by modern web browsers. /s
  • slt2021 2y ago
    Seriously, Windows 2000 was one of the most stable OS back in the day, rock solid. I used 2000 server as a desktop OS, instead of 98. unlike shit show that was windows 95/98/ME
    • smackeyacky 2y ago
      Windows 2000 server was peak windows. All the subsequent versions just got harder to maintain as they gradually ruined the user interface. Nobody cares about the UI on consumer windows but if you’re spending a lot of time in RDP the vista based server products are terrible. I don’t hate windows 2019 but Linux is better, easier, faster and a relief after any futile attempts to use IIS or sql server in 2025.
      • aloha2436 2y ago
        > vista based server products are terrible. The first generation of tabletised 8/Metro interfaces made me audibly groan every time I had to RDP into machines running 2012.
        • smackeyacky 2y ago
          Oh yes. I still have a client that has 2012 and it physically hurts to use
        • 9dev 2y ago
          The stuttering over RDP when the start menu animation tried to slide in the tiles was amazing.
      • genewitch 2y ago
        windows xp x64 edition was pretty slick; and so was NT4. I agree that 2000 was pretty cool, but perhaps a lot of that is design nostalgia. It was very "serious business OS" where XP and Me looked like jellybeans and cartoons. My favorite windows, though, is win 7 ultimate, Steve Ballmer Edition. i was sad when i had to upgrade to winten. ninja proof: https://i.imgur.com/l29rDVo.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/l29rDVo.jpeg
  • UltraSane 2y ago
    So it is one of the most successful examples of dogfooding in history?
• giuseppe_petri 2y ago
  Pre Microsoft hotmail is one of the things I miss about the 'old' internet, logging in with Navigator 3.something in the library at uni.
• osigurdson 2y ago
  Businesses are theoretically all about money but end up being driven by pride half the time.
  • throwaway2037 2y ago
    Makes sense to me. After all, businesses are run by humans, who have egos to satisfy.
    • guenthert 2y ago
      Engineers might take pride in their work, but on this level in a big organization, I rather suspect turf wars as motivation.
  • cubano 2y ago
    Of course. Why would you expect anything but? Pride is actually a very good driver of change if you ask me because people often do their best work when they are proud of what they are building.
    • osigurdson 2y ago
      Perhaps ego is a better term. Concretely, why migrate hotmail from unix to Windows except due to ego? The NPV has to be negative here.
• andrewf 2y ago
  Links in the original are dead but I think this is the Microsoft doc on “what could Windows do better” - https://web.itu.edu.tr/~dalyanda/mssecrets/hotmail.html https://web.itu.edu.tr/~dalyanda/mssecrets/hotmail.html
  • EvanAnderson 2y ago
    Thanks for linking to this. The tone and content of this document is shockingly candid and frank. I think it did a ton to make Windows Server a better product. I have a lot of respect for the people at MSFT who reviewed the company's own product in such a critical light.
• motorest 2y ago
  > It took years until they were successful. The 90s were the dark ages of cloud computing. It was the age of system administrator, desktop apps, Usenet, and the start of the internet as a public service. At the time concepts such as infrastructure as code, cloud, and continuous deployment, were unheard of. AWS, which today we take for granted, was launched on 2002, and back then it started as a way to monetize Amazon's existing shared IT platform. Of course migrating anything back then was a world of pain, specially when it's servers running on different OSes. It's like the rewrite from hell, that can even cover the OS layer. Of course it takes years.
  • ivan_gammel 2y ago
    > At the time concepts such as infrastructure as code, cloud, and continuous deployment, were unheard of. There existed different names and solutions for things like cloud. I worked with Grid Engine in 2000 after Sun acquired Gridware, but that project started in 1993. By 2000 we were experimenting with running Star Office on the grid and serving UI to thin clients (kind of what Google Docs or Office 365 do now, but on completely different stack).
• hulitu 2y ago
  IIS was wide open in Win NT/2k days. It took Microsoft some good years to patch the holes.