They have the most to lose. I think all of you that know UNIX and Linux appreciate the fact that M$ prime product, any thing based on the NT kernel, is actually a UNIX like OS. In fact the NT kernel and related libraries are based on a UNIX kernel, namely VMS. Tt is true that NT is based on VMS because of Dave Cutler, but VMS is not a Unix kernel (although OpenVMS is POSIX compliant). The internal architecture of VMS is very different from Unix. Some of the key features of Unix were not in VMS, such as pipes, Unix style I/O redirection (I/O could be redirected, but in a different manner). The VMS style of shared libraries pre-dates Unix shared objects. And, most of VMS was not written in C (it was written in BLIS). Even the signalling mechanism was different. VMS used ASTs (Asynchronous System Traps) which were much more reliable than Unix signals. (This is just what I can think of from my VMS days). Open VMS incorporated some of
On Fri, 23 May 2003 20:14:15 +1000
"Paul Ketelaar"