Talk:Xenix
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An event mentioned in this article is an August 25 selected anniversary.
To me at least this article doesn't make clear the the SCO here is "old SCO"
<daniel@nelxe.dk>: I think that Microsoft actually used to own Santa Cruz Operation....so they didn't really abandon the UNIX efforts...SCO released SCO Unix..
I remember a presentation in 1999 of the editor of the Linux Journal playing up a number of Microsoft ads from the early to mid 1980s where Bill Gates states that he is convinced that UNIX was the best Operating System around. Not entirely unbelieveable: DOS not only survived, but thrived despite both MS's & IBM's best attempts otherwise. And I suspect MS would like to forget their involvement in this 30-year-old technology; best reason for the changes I made to the relevant articles. -- llywrch 03:02 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)
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- Truth be told, this is not a simple tale and I doubt there is much shame at MS over their long UNIX history (only perhaps a bit of marketing spin to keep consumers focused on Windows). There have long been rumours Gates recommended Xenix to IBM for the PC but was flatly turned down since MS was but a licensee of AT&T, IBM's biggest potential competitor at the time (the AT&T breakup was looming and with it, AT&T's entry into the computer market). Gates then offered CP/M, but the IBM guys didn't negotiate well with DR and came back to Gates still looking for an OS so at last he scrounged and came up with Quick 'n Dirty, which was about his last easy option. MS/PC-DOS, even cleaned up, was utterly primitive compared to Xenix, but its fast, unprotected calls and wide open structure worked well for games too and licensing costs were nill. When he realized how much money could be made on an open hardware platform with a light OS (program launcher, really) that MS owned outright and which met a cheap, marketable standard (which included "hackability" for lucrative games), he went with the market (never mind the pressures of MS having gone public after the IBM deal) and the public ultimately bought the cheapest OS available- MS-DOS. There are also rumours one of the many reasons Paul Allen left MS was his unhappiness with the shift in focus away from UNIX-like products (MS had been a small but respected language vendor edging into UNIX for the low end mini-computer market before its meeting with destiny and IBM). Meanwhile by 1987 Microsoft's Xenix was still the most widely installed form of UNIX in the world: MS-DOS, OS/2 and NT were all fundamentally influenced by it. Early Windows was built on Xenix boxes. In effect, internally MS was a UNIX shop until 1993. Gates was still preaching the virtues of UNIX as late as 1996 and even claiming that NT was (in a "weak" sense, his word) a form of UNIX. Microsoft's gradual withdrawl from the UNIX market likely made it many more billions than it would have made otherwise but also left a wide open opportunity for Linux and later the BSDs to attract the markets MS left untended. Meanwhile MS bought/licensed/
stoleimitated the best, cheaply implemented the spoils and along with some cunning business practices shoved them into the market pipeline which by 1995 or so it utterly dominated. Gwen Gale 19:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
- Truth be told, this is not a simple tale and I doubt there is much shame at MS over their long UNIX history (only perhaps a bit of marketing spin to keep consumers focused on Windows). There have long been rumours Gates recommended Xenix to IBM for the PC but was flatly turned down since MS was but a licensee of AT&T, IBM's biggest potential competitor at the time (the AT&T breakup was looming and with it, AT&T's entry into the computer market). Gates then offered CP/M, but the IBM guys didn't negotiate well with DR and came back to Gates still looking for an OS so at last he scrounged and came up with Quick 'n Dirty, which was about his last easy option. MS/PC-DOS, even cleaned up, was utterly primitive compared to Xenix, but its fast, unprotected calls and wide open structure worked well for games too and licensing costs were nill. When he realized how much money could be made on an open hardware platform with a light OS (program launcher, really) that MS owned outright and which met a cheap, marketable standard (which included "hackability" for lucrative games), he went with the market (never mind the pressures of MS having gone public after the IBM deal) and the public ultimately bought the cheapest OS available- MS-DOS. There are also rumours one of the many reasons Paul Allen left MS was his unhappiness with the shift in focus away from UNIX-like products (MS had been a small but respected language vendor edging into UNIX for the low end mini-computer market before its meeting with destiny and IBM). Meanwhile by 1987 Microsoft's Xenix was still the most widely installed form of UNIX in the world: MS-DOS, OS/2 and NT were all fundamentally influenced by it. Early Windows was built on Xenix boxes. In effect, internally MS was a UNIX shop until 1993. Gates was still preaching the virtues of UNIX as late as 1996 and even claiming that NT was (in a "weak" sense, his word) a form of UNIX. Microsoft's gradual withdrawl from the UNIX market likely made it many more billions than it would have made otherwise but also left a wide open opportunity for Linux and later the BSDs to attract the markets MS left untended. Meanwhile MS bought/licensed/
I've added a little information on the later descendants of Xenix (SCO UNIX and OpenServer) and a redirect from OpenServer, but the information is pretty sparse. Anyone who knows more about this should add to the article. (I know, I know, SCO is "evil" these days - I run Linux myself - but that doesn't mean Wikipedia shouldn't list information about them.) Beinsane 00:02, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Available Microsoft XENIX Software
I removed this section, which previously said, in full: "Microsoft Pascal Compiler for the 286 XENIX Operating System (didn't support 386 extentions". I considered cleaning it to: "Microsoft Pascal Compiler for the 286 Xenix Operating System (did not support 386 extensions)" but then considered the section was too sparse to stand alone. If anyone can flesh out the section with other software available then feel free to add it back in. Pelago 22:25, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] A Question
How could microsoft get the licensed from AT&T in the late 1970s while it was founded in 1975? (see microsoft page)
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- Why not? Gwen Gale 19:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
