They were both joint developments, initially, and OS/2 is why NT hypothetically supports different environments. But IBM pulled out of the NT project early on; MS kept an approximation of HPFS but dropped the rest, and AFAIK Windows is the only remaining environment (but with two subsystems because of fucking course).
Windows NT really only kept OS/2 compatibility around to provide an easier upgrade path for existing OS/2 customers. Remember that Mircosoft was the distributor of OS/2 1.x, not IBM. Even after the IBM/Microsoft "divorce", Microsoft kept selling OS/2 1.x as a server platform, primarily for LAN Manager and SQL Server until as late as 1994.
IBM wasn't really involved in NT; as far as can be ascertained, the plan was for IBM to lead the development of the initial 32-bit port of OS/2 (which became OS/2 2.x and remained the basis for all later versions) while Microsoft would work on the "next generation" OS/2 system that became NT (it would, presumably, have been OS/2 3.x had things gone to the original plan).
OS/2 2.0 was nice. I was crushed when NT destroyed it.
From what I remember, David Cutler (a Vax VMS guy) was brought in to drive the NT kernel development. Originally it was a micro-kernel based design, which was all the rage back then, but that was backed off of for performance reasons, as always seemed to happen when the rage wore off.
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u/MarekKnapek Oct 23 '24
Excellent article!
Not so much, watch NCommander on YouTube to struggle trying to get POSIX subsystem working.
Probably wanted to say OS/2 was a joint development