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Liam Proven's thoughts on IT, especially FOSS
The real reason that the first version of Windows NT was called 3.1
The real reason that the first version of Windows NT was called 3.1
May. 6th, 2022 11:03 am
liam_on_linux: (Default)
[personal profile] liam_on_linux
A lot of history in computing is being lost. Stuff that was
mainstream, common knowledge early in my career is largely forgotten
now.
This includes simple knowledge about how to operate computers... which
is I think why Linux desktops (e.g. GNOME and Pantheon) just throw
stuff out: because their developers don't know how this stuff works,
or why it is that way, so they think it's unimportant.
Some of these big companies have stuff they've forgotten about. They
don't know it's historically important. They don't know that it's not
related to any modern product. The version numbering of Windows was
intentionally obscure.
Example: NT. First release of NT was, logically, 1.0. But it wasn't
called that. It was called 3.1. Why?
Casual apparent reason: well because mainstream Windows was version
3.1 so it was in parallel.
This is marketing. It's not actually true.
Real reason: MS had a deal in place with Novell to include some
handling of Novell Netware client drive mappings. Novell gave MS a
little bit of Novell's client source code, so that Novell shares
looked like other network shares, meaning peer-to-peer file shares in
Windows for Workgroups.
(Sound weird? It wasn't. Parallel example: 16-bit Windows (i.e. 3.x)
did not include TCP/IP or any form of dial-up networking stack. Just
a terminal emulator for BBS use, no networking over modems. People
used a 3rd party tool for this.
But Internet Explorer was supported on Windows 3.1x. So MS had to
write its own alll-new dialup PPP stack and bundle it with 16-bit IE.
Otherwise you could download the MS browser for the MS OS and it
couldn't connect and that would look very foolish.
The dialup stack only did dialup and could not work over a LAN
connection. The LAN connection could not do PPP or SLIP over a serial
connection. Totally separate stacks.
Well, the dominant server OS was Netware and again the stack was
totally separate, with different drivers, different protocols,
everything. So Windows couldn't make or break Novell drive mappings,
and the Novell tools couldn't make or break MS network connections.
Thus the need for some sharing of intellectual property and code.)
Novell was, very reasonably, super wary of Microsoft. MS has a
history of stealing code: DoubleSpace contained stolen STAC code;
Video for Windows contained stolen Apple QuickTime code; etc. etc.
The agreement with Novell only covered "Windows 3.1". That is why the
second, finished, working edition of Windows for Workgroups, a big
version with massive changes, was called... Windows for Workgroups 3.11
.
And that's why NT was also called 3.1. Because that way it fell under
the Novell agreement.
Postscript
A decade ago I wrote about the decline and fall of Netware:
https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/07/16/netware_4_anniversary/
But I didn't mention another pecularity of the Novell/MS uneasy
relationship around the time of the launch of NT.
Novell did not really believe that a new MS OS had a chance. So,
although MS kept asking, and provided Novell with betas, Novell did
not write a Netware client for NT.
So MS wrote its own. It reverse-engineered the protocol and embedded
its own Netware client into NT. It was initially able to connect to
Netware 3 servers, but later gained basic authentication-only support
for Netware 4's NDS as well.
Novell backpedalled and hastily wrote a client. If I recall correctly
- it's more than 30 years ago now - it shipped after NT 3.1 came out.
So it was initally buggy and that meant it could crash the new
crash-proof OS.
Meaning that they competed: admins, including me, had a choice. Run
the functionally-limited but stable MS client, or the feature-rich
Novell client that could destabilise your very expensive high-end
workstations?
Worse was to come. Since they'd already reverse-engineered the
client, MS implemented a server as well. NT could pretend to be a
Netware server, and unmodified Netware client PCs (DOS, Windows 3,
Windows for Workgroups, whatever) could connect to an NT box without
changing the client. And as that was elaborate and involved a lot of
memory optimisation, that helped.
The server emulation wasn't a deal-breaker, but it weakened the
Novell position. But failing to write a client for what rapidly
became a serious business workstation OS was a critical error and at
that extremely risky time for Novell, it contributed to the company's
fall.
Tags:
* microsoft,
* netware,
* novell,
* windows 3,
* windows for workgroups,
* windows nt
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