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

[John Wallace]

On Nov 24, 12:49 pm, Neil Rieck <n.ri... at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> I just finished the book “Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create
> Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft” and found it a
> riveting description of the activities of Cutler and other DEC people
> at Microsoft. Here are two final extracts you may find amusing.
>
> P 179: Digital Equipment, his (Cutler's) former employer and current
> nemesis, agreed to become the first computer maker to buy NT for the
> purpose of porting, or adapting, it to computers powered bu Digital's
> own microchip, called Alpha. The very people assigned to do the port
> were some of Cutler's old employees at Digital West. Cutler exulted,
> "Digital's management ran me out of the company" he said, "and a mere
> four years later they knocked on my door." Cutler saw the Mica
> operating system , whose cancellation by Digital prompted his
> departure, as a rough equivalent of NT. "Digital is now paying for
> something they could have had for free".
>
> P 179.  But some Digital people privately agreed that Culter's
> departure still ranlked top executive and the Digital's adoption of NT
> was tantamount to admitting a mistake. "Driving asway Culter was one
> of the dumbest f*ck*ng things Digital ever did", on person said. "But
> we can't say we screwed up because some of the idiots responsible for
> that are still here".
>
> P 266. Windows-NT (version 1.0) was build from 5.6 million lines of
> code
>
> Neil Rieck
> Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
> Ontario, Canada.http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/

I don't remember anybody ever calling DECwest "Digital West". The
Internerd remembers lots of relevant references to DECwest but a quick
look finds no relevant references to "Digital West". If that's a
direct quote rather than a transcription hiccup, then I do hope the
rest of the book is a lot more reliable and trustworthy.

As an example of such reliability or otherwise, does the book contain
any references to the untrustworthiness of Microsoft as a "bet your
business" 'partner' organisation? This wasn't necessarily well known
in the Palmer era but plenty of people and plenty of organisations
have had first hand experience of it since then.