[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[Neil Rieck]

On Nov 6, 7:43 am, m.krae... at gsi.de (Michael Kraemer) wrote:
> In article <78797018-2cfb-402d-9eb9-b1f109c76... at p8g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
>
> Neil Rieck <n.ri... at sympatico.ca> writes:
> > Since any idiot can put up a web page these days, you know it all
> > can't be true. So imagine my surprise when I bumped into this:
>
> >http://radsoft.net/rants/20040831,00.shtml
>
> And:
>
> "Dave took his engineers and his new operating system called 'Prism' cross town
> to the Redmond campus."
>
> How that?
> Presumably everything he did at M$ would be IP of DEC,
> so he couldn't just "take it with him", unless DEC permitted it.
> AFAIK he left as a "disgruntled employee" so DEC would have had
> even less reason to give it away.

Here is one page of several I recently found (I am still looking)
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/07/30/readers-write-how-microsoft-got-windows-nt/

<quote>
“So, Cutler walked down the street to Microsoft and offered them Mica
which became NT. Later DEC sued MS and, in an out of court settlement,
got royalties for the filched technology. Part of the deal included
targeting NT (back) onto the Alpha platform.

”BTW, this was not an usual procedure at DEC. Many employees left the
company with intellectual property from a cancelled project under
their arm, with the understanding that if they made it a commercial
success then DEC would come back knocking on the door for for
royalties.“
</quote>

This page, as well as others, claim the back-porting of WindowsNT to
Alpha was part of the settlement. Microsoft was the true beneficiary
of this deal when Compaq decided to walk away from the WindowsNT on
Alpha business.

Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/docs/dave_cutler-prism-mica-emerald-etc.html