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To add a small quibble here, Microsoft was not a "small company" in 1992. They were one of the most well known and most successful software companies in the wor
by InclinedPlane 12y ago
To add a small quibble here, Microsoft was not a "small company" in 1992. They were one of the most well known and most successful software companies in the world. But they were not nearly as large nor as dominant as they would become in the late '90s, though the entire industry grew enormously in that time frame as well.
- HillRat 12y agoTo be slightly more specific, MSFT had a market cap of $23 billion and had just shipped Windows 3.1. It was so much in the zeitgeist that Doug Copeland would set a novel there a few years later. In any case, there wasn't any reason not to see microkernels as the only viable way forward, especially given the multitude of competing Unix variants that had grown to unwieldy, multi-mega-SLOC monsters. The future seemed to be with lightweight, microkernel OSes like QNX, the UNICOS update, HURD (seriously, it was a thing back then!) and improved Mach and Chorus versions. The idea of writing a Unix-like as anything other than a toy seemed absurd. History is a very hard thing to predict in advance.