Proprietary software is software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modifying it, and—in some cases, as is the case with some patent-encumbered and EULA -bound software—from making use of the software on their own, thereby restricting their freedoms.
114-465: 24H2 (10.0.26100.2454) (November 21, 2024 ; 2 days ago ( 2024-11-21 ) ) [±] 23H2 (10.0.22635.4515) (November 22, 2024 ; 1 day ago ( 2024-11-22 ) ) [±] 24H2 (10.0.26120.2415) (November 22, 2024 ; 1 day ago ( 2024-11-22 ) ) [±] Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line,
228-671: A Microsoft Windows , macOS or Linux workstation. DEC created a number of optional database products for VMS, some of which were marketed as the VAX Information Architecture family. These products included: In 1994, DEC sold Rdb, DBMS and CDD to Oracle , where they remain under active development. In 1995, DEC sold DSM to InterSystems , who renamed it Open M , and eventually replaced it with their Caché product. Examples of third-party database management systems for OpenVMS include MariaDB , Mimer SQL ( Itanium and x86-64 ), and System 1032 . VMS
342-428: A dedicated x64 edition ) has x64 editions. The first version of Windows NT to support ARM64 devices with Qualcomm processors was Windows 10, version 1709 . This is a full version of Windows, rather than the cut-down Windows RT . The minimum hardware specification required to run each release of the professional workstation version of Windows NT has been fairly slow-moving until the 6.0 (Vista) release, which requires
456-449: A single system image abstraction. Nodes may be connected to each other via a proprietary hardware connection called Cluster Interconnect or via a standard Ethernet LAN . OpenVMS supports up to 96 nodes in a single cluster. It also allows mixed-architecture clusters. OpenVMS clusters allow applications to function during planned or unplanned outages. Planned outages include hardware and software upgrades. The DECnet protocol suite
570-637: A terminal server such as one of the DECserver family. DEC (and its successor companies) provided a wide variety of programming languages for VMS. Officially supported languages on VMS, either current or historical, include: Among OpenVMS's notable features is the Common Language Environment , a strictly defined standard that specifies calling conventions for functions and routines, including use of stacks , registers , etc., independent of programming language. Because of this, it
684-476: A trade secret . Software can be made available with fewer restrictions on licensing or source-code access; software that satisfies certain conditions of freedom and openness is known as " free " or " open-source ." Since license agreements do not override applicable copyright law or contract law , provisions in conflict with applicable law are not enforceable. Some software is specifically licensed and not sold, in order to avoid limitations of copyright such as
798-507: A "mixed source" model including both free and non-free software in the same distribution. Most if not all so-called proprietary UNIX distributions are mixed source software, bundling open-source components like BIND , Sendmail , X Window System , DHCP , and others along with a purely proprietary kernel and system utilities. Some free software packages are also simultaneously available under proprietary terms. Examples include MySQL , Sendmail and ssh. The original copyright holders for
912-446: A "pure" 32-bit kernel with 32-bit memory addressing, support for instruction sets other than x86 , and many other system services such as Active Directory and more. Newer versions of Windows NT support 64-bit computing , with a 64-bit kernel and 64-bit memory addressing. Windows NT is a group or family of products — like Windows is a group or family. Windows NT is a sub-grouping of Windows. The first version of Windows NT, 3.1 ,
1026-523: A February 21, 1997, internal Microsoft memo drafted for Bill Gates : Early versions of the iPhone SDK were covered by a non-disclosure agreement . The agreement forbade independent developers from discussing the content of the interfaces. Apple discontinued the NDA in October 2008. Any dependency on the future versions and upgrades for a proprietary software package can create vendor lock-in , entrenching
1140-467: A Government Security Program (GSP) to allow governments to view source code and Microsoft security documentation, of which the Chinese government was an early participant. The program is part of Microsoft's broader Shared Source Initiative which provides source code access for some products. The Reference Source License (Ms-RSL) and Limited Public License (Ms-LPL) are proprietary software licenses where
1254-481: A VirtualBox VM with certain limitations; most significantly, few layered products were available, and code can only be compiled for x86-64 using cross compilers which run on Itanium-based OpenVMS systems. Following the V9.0 release, VSI released a series of updates on a monthly or bimonthly basis which added additional functionality and hypervisor support. These were designated V9.0-A through V9.0-H. In June 2021, VSI released
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#17327725447601368-744: A common definition. DEC provided a collection of software development tools in a layered product named DECset (originally named VAXset ). This consisted of the following tools: The OpenVMS Debugger supports all DEC compilers and many third-party languages. It allows breakpoints, watchpoints and interactive runtime program debugging using either a command line or graphical user interface . A pair of lower-level debuggers, named DELTA and XDELTA , can be used to debug privileged code in additional to normal application code. In 2019, VSI released an officially supported Integrated Development Environment for VMS based on Visual Studio Code . This allows VMS applications to be developed and debugged remotely from
1482-401: A copy can decide whether, and how much, to charge for a copy or related services. Proprietary software that comes for no cost is called freeware . Proponents of commercial proprietary software argue that requiring users to pay for software as a product increases funding or time available for the research and development of software. For example, Microsoft says that per-copy fees maximize
1596-527: A core kernel providing a system API, running in supervisor mode (ring 0 in x86; referred to in Windows NT as "kernel mode" on all platforms), and a set of user-space environments with their own APIs which included the new Win32 environment, an OS/2 1.3 text-mode environment and a POSIX environment. The full preemptive multitasking kernel could interrupt running tasks to schedule other tasks, without relying on user programs to voluntarily give up control of
1710-477: A distinction between 32-bit and 64-bit executables, but instead allows for both 32-bit and 64-bit pointers to be used within the same code. This is known as mixed pointer support. The 64-bit OpenVMS Alpha releases support a maximum virtual address space size of 8TiB (a 43-bit address space), which is the maximum supported by the Alpha 21064 and Alpha 21164 . One of the more noteworthy Alpha-only features of OpenVMS
1824-541: A higher level of privilege than most user code. This is in order to prevent accidental or malicious manipulation of the CLI's code and data structures by user-mode code. OpenVMS supports clustering (first called VAXcluster and later VMScluster ), where multiple computers run their own instance of the operating system. Clustered computers (nodes) may be fully independent from each other, or they may share devices like disk drives and printers. Communication across nodes provides
1938-466: A layered architecture, consisting of a privileged Executive , an intermediately privileged Command Language Interpreter, and unprivileged utilities and run-time libraries (RTLs). Unprivileged code typically invokes the functionality of the Executive through system services (equivalent to system calls in other operating systems). OpenVMS' layers and mechanisms are built around certain features of
2052-564: A license for the Internet forum software vBulletin can modify the source for their own site but cannot redistribute it. This is true for many web applications, which must be in source code form when being run by a web server. The source code is covered by a non-disclosure agreement or a license that allows, for example, study and modification, but not redistribution. The text-based email client Pine and certain implementations of Secure Shell are distributed with proprietary licenses that make
2166-533: A minimum of 15 GB of free disk space, a tenfold increase in free disk space alone over the previous version, and the 2021 10.0 (11) release which excludes most systems built before 2018. Proprietary software Proprietary software is a subset of non-free software , a term defined in contrast to free and open-source software ; non-commercial licenses such as CC BY-NC are not deemed proprietary, but are non-free. Proprietary software may either be closed-source software or source-available software . Until
2280-560: A monopoly position. Proprietary software may also have licensing terms that limit the usage of that software to a specific set of hardware. Apple has such a licensing model for macOS , an operating system which is limited to Apple hardware, both by licensing and various design decisions. This licensing model has been affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit . Proprietary software which
2394-614: A play on VMS , incrementing each letter by one . However, the project was originally intended as a follow-on to OS/2 and was referred to as "NT OS/2" before receiving the Windows brand. One of the original NT developers, Mark Lucovsky , states that the name was taken from the original target processor—the Intel i860 , code-named N10 ("N-Ten").A 1991 video featuring Bill Gates and Microsoft products specifically says that "Windows NT stands for 'New Technology'". Seven year later in 1998, during
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#17327725447602508-548: A portable operating system, compatible with OS/2 and POSIX and supporting multiprocessing , in October 1988. When development started in November 1989, Windows NT was to be known as OS/2 3.0, the third version of the operating system developed jointly by Microsoft and IBM . To ensure portability, initial development was targeted at the Intel i860 XR RISC processor , switching to the MIPS R3000 in late 1989, and then
2622-573: A prototype Alpha EV3 -based Alpha Demonstration Unit in early 1991. The main challenge in porting VMS to a new architecture was that VMS and the VAX were designed together, meaning that VMS was dependent on certain details of the VAX architecture. Furthermore, a significant amount of the VMS kernel, layered products, and customer-developed applications were implemented in VAX MACRO assembly code. Some of
2736-413: A question-and-answer (Q&A) session, he then revealed that the letters were previously expanded to such but no longer carry any specific meaning. The letters were dropped from the names of releases from Windows 2000 and later, though Microsoft described that product as being "Built on NT Technology". "NT" was a trademark of Northern Telecom (later Nortel ), which Microsoft was forced to acknowledge on
2850-624: A rich set of security permissions to be applied to systems and services. NT has also supported Windows network protocols, inheriting the previous OS/2 LAN Manager networking, as well as TCP/IP networking (for which Microsoft used to implement a TCP/IP stack derived at first from a STREAMS -based stack from Spider Systems , then later rewritten in-house). Windows NT 3.1 was the first version of Windows to use 32-bit flat virtual memory addressing on 32-bit processors. Its companion product, Windows 3.1, used segmented addressing and switches from 16-bit to 32-bit addressing in pages. Windows NT 3.1 featured
2964-481: A single user or computer. In some cases, software features are restricted during or after the trial period, a practice sometimes called crippleware . Proprietary software often stores some of its data in file formats that are incompatible with other software, and may also communicate using protocols which are incompatible. Such formats and protocols may be restricted as trade secrets or subject to patents . A proprietary application programming interface (API)
3078-462: A software package may be ended to force users to upgrade and pay for newer versions ( planned obsolescence ). Sometimes another vendor or a software's community themselves can provide support for the software, or the users can migrate to either competing systems with longer support life cycles or to FOSS -based systems. Some proprietary software is released by their owner at end-of-life as open-source or source available software, often to prevent
3192-415: A stripped-down version of the Windows operating system. Windows 11 is the first non-server version of Windows NT that does not support 32-bit platforms. The 64-bit versions of Windows NT were originally intended to run on Itanium and DEC Alpha ; the latter was used internally at Microsoft during early development of 64-bit Windows. This continued for some time after Microsoft publicly announced that it
3306-423: A team was set up to design new VAX/VMS systems of comparable performance to RISC -based Unix systems. After a number of failed attempts to design a faster VAX-compatible processor, the group demonstrated the feasibility of porting VMS and its applications to a RISC architecture based on PRISM. This led to the creation of the Alpha architecture. The project to port VMS to Alpha began in 1989, and first booted on
3420-425: A technical measure, such as product activation , a product key or serial number, a hardware key , or copy protection . Vendors may also distribute versions that remove particular features, or versions which allow only certain fields of endeavor, such as non-commercial, educational, or non-profit use. Use restrictions vary by license: Vendors typically distribute proprietary software in compiled form, usually
3534-406: A work of free software, even copyleft free software, can use dual-licensing to allow themselves or others to redistribute proprietary versions. Non-copyleft free software (i.e. software distributed under a permissive free software license or released to the public domain) allows anyone to make proprietary redistributions. Free software that depends on proprietary software is considered "trapped" by
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3648-484: Is a software library interface "specific to one device or, more likely to a number of devices within a particular manufacturer's product range." The motivation for using a proprietary API can be vendor lock-in or because standard APIs do not support the device's functionality. The European Commission , in its March 24, 2004, decision on Microsoft's business practices, quotes, in paragraph 463, Microsoft general manager for C++ development Aaron Contorer as stating in
3762-615: Is an internal identifier used by Microsoft's developers and beta testers. Starting with Windows 8.1 , Microsoft changed the Version API Helper functions' behavior. If an application is not manifested for Windows 8.1 or later, the API will always return version 6.2, which is the version number of Windows 8 . This is because the manifest feature was introduced with Windows 8.1, to replace GetVersion and related functions. In order to prevent Intel x86 -specific code from slipping into
3876-408: Is designed to support time-sharing , batch processing , transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using OpenVMS include banks and financial services, hospitals and healthcare, telecommunications operators, network information services, and industrial manufacturers. During the 1990s and 2000s, there were approximately half a million VMS systems in operation worldwide. It
3990-617: Is further subdivided between the Kernel , which consists of the code which runs at the kernel access mode, and the less-privileged code outside of the Kernel which runs at the executive access mode. The components of the Executive which run at executive access mode include the Record Management Services , and certain system services such as image activation. The main distinction between the kernel and executive access modes
4104-587: Is limited to 2 TiB volumes. DEC attempted to replace it with a log-structured file system named Spiralog, first released in 1995. However, Spiralog was discontinued due to a variety of problems, including issues with handling full volumes. Instead, there has been discussion of porting the open-source GFS2 file system to OpenVMS. An OpenVMS Command Language Interpreter (CLI) implements a command-line interface for OpenVMS, responsible for executing individual commands and command procedures (equivalent to shell scripts or batch files ). The standard CLI for OpenVMS
4218-489: Is no longer marketed, supported or sold by its owner is called abandonware , the digital form of orphaned works . If the proprietor of a software package should cease to exist, or decide to cease or limit production or support for a proprietary software package, recipients and users of the package may have no recourse if problems are found with the software. Proprietors can fail to improve and support software because of business problems. Support for older or existing versions of
4332-436: Is not synonymous with commercial software , although the two terms are sometimes used synonymously in articles about free software. Proprietary software can be distributed at no cost or for a fee, and free software can be distributed at no cost or for a fee. The difference is that whether proprietary software can be distributed, and what the fee would be, is at the proprietor's discretion. With free software, anyone who has
4446-584: Is possible to call a routine written in one language (for example, Fortran) from another (for example, COBOL), without needing to know the implementation details of the target language. OpenVMS itself is implemented in a variety of different languages and the common language environment and calling standard supports freely mixing these languages. DEC created a tool named the Structure Definition Language (SDL), which allowed data type definitions to be generated for different languages from
4560-400: Is required for another party to use the software. In the case of proprietary software with source code available, the vendor may also prohibit customers from distributing their modifications to the source code. Shareware is closed-source software whose owner encourages redistribution at no cost, but which the user sometimes must pay to use after a trial period. The fee usually allows use by
4674-570: Is responsible for accessing the file system on the boot drive, starting the kernel , and loading boot-time device drivers into memory. Once all the boot and system drivers have been loaded, the kernel starts the Session Manager Subsystem . This process launches winlogon , which allows the user to login. Once the user is logged in File Explorer is started, loading the graphical user interface of Windows NT. Windows NT
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4788-447: Is that most of the operating system's core data structures can be read from executive mode, but require kernel mode to be written to. Code running at executive mode can switch to kernel mode at will, meaning that the barrier between the kernel and executive modes is intended as a safeguard against accidental corruption as opposed to a security mechanism. The Kernel comprises the operating system's core data structures (e.g. page tables,
4902-529: Is the DIGITAL Command Language , although other options are available. Unlike Unix shells , which typically run in their own isolated process and behave like any other user-mode program, OpenVMS CLIs are an optional component of a process, which exist alongside any executable image which that process may run. Whereas a Unix shell will typically run executables by creating a separate process using fork-exec , an OpenVMS CLI will typically load
5016-549: Is tightly integrated into VMS, allowing remote logins, as well as transparent access to files, printers and other resources on VMS systems over a network. VAX/VMS V1.0 featured support for DECnet Phase II, and modern versions of VMS support both the traditional Phase IV DECnet protocol, as well as the OSI-compatible Phase V (also known as DECnet-Plus ). Support for TCP/IP is provided by the optional TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS layered product (originally known as
5130-478: Is written in C and C++ , with a very small amount written in assembly language . C is mostly used for the kernel code while C++ is mostly used for user-mode code. Assembly language is avoided where possible because it would impede portability . The following are the releases of Windows based on the Windows NT technology. Windows NT 3.1 to 3.51 incorporated the Program Manager and File Manager from
5244-440: The $ CMEXEC and $ CMKRNL system services, respectively. This allows code outside of system space to have direct access to the Executive's routines and system services. In addition to allowing third-party extensions to the operating system, Privileged Images are used by core operating system utilities to manipulate operating system data structures through undocumented interfaces. The typical user and application interface into
5358-592: The Apple Macintosh to serve as a terminal for VMS systems, or to use VMS systems as a file or print server. PATHWORKS was later renamed to Advanced Server for OpenVMS , and was eventually replaced with a VMS port of Samba at the time of the Itanium port. DEC provided the Local Area Transport (LAT) protocol which allowed remote terminals and printers to be attached to a VMS system through
5472-595: The Intel i386 in 1990. Microsoft also continued parallel development of the DOS-based and less resource -demanding Windows environment, resulting in the release of Windows 3.0 in May 1990. Windows 3.0 was eventually so successful that Microsoft decided to change the primary application programming interface for the still unreleased NT OS/2 (as it was then known) from an extended OS/2 API to an extended Windows API . This decision caused tension between Microsoft and IBM and
5586-751: The PowerPC processor in 1995, specifically PReP -compliant systems such as the IBM ThinkPad Power Series laptops and Motorola PowerStack series; but despite meetings between Michael Spindler and Bill Gates, not on the Power Macintosh as the PReP compliant Power Macintosh project failed to ship. Intergraph Corporation ported Windows NT to its Clipper architecture and later announced an intention to port Windows NT 3.51 to Sun Microsystems ' SPARC architecture, in conjunction with
5700-755: The VMS/ULTRIX Connection , then as the ULTRIX Communications Extensions or UCX). TCP/IP Services is based on a port of the BSD network stack to OpenVMS, along with support for common protocols such as SSH , DHCP , FTP and SMTP . DEC sold a software package named PATHWORKS (originally known as the Personal Computer Systems Architecture or PCSA) which allowed personal computers running MS-DOS , Microsoft Windows or OS/2 , or
5814-531: The Windows 3.1x series. Windows NT 4.0 onwards replaced those programs with Windows Explorer (including a taskbar and Start menu ), which originally appeared in Windows 95 . The first release was given version number 3.1 to match the contemporary 16-bit Windows; magazines of that era claimed the number was also used to make that version seem more reliable than a ".0" release. Also the Novell IPX protocol
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#17327725447605928-587: The Windows 8 -derived Windows RT on October 26, 2012, and the use of Windows NT, rather than Windows CE, in Windows Phone 8 . The original Xbox and Xbox 360 run a custom operating system based upon a heavily modified version of Windows 2000 , an approach that Microsoft engineer Don Box called "fork and run". It exports APIs similar to those found in Microsoft Windows , such as Direct3D . The Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S consoles use
6042-511: The Windows 9x family. Starting with Windows 2000 , "NT" was removed from the product name yet is still in several low-level places in the system — including for a while as part of the product version. Versions of Windows NT are installed using Windows Setup , which, starting with Windows Vista , uses the Windows Preinstallation Environment , which is a lightweight version of Windows NT made for deployment of
6156-573: The file system is the Record Management Services (RMS), although applications can interface directly with the underlying file system through the QIO system services. The file systems supported by VMS are referred to as the Files-11 On-Disk Structures (ODS), the most significant of which are ODS-2 and ODS-5 . VMS is also capable of accessing files on ISO 9660 CD-ROMs and magnetic tape with ANSI tape labels . Files-11
6270-425: The first-sale doctrine . The owner of proprietary software exercises certain exclusive rights over the software. The owner can restrict the use, inspection of source code, modification of source code, and redistribution. Vendors typically limit the number of computers on which software can be used, and prohibit the user from installing the software on extra computers. Restricted use is sometimes enforced through
6384-468: The machine language understood by the computer's central processing unit . They typically retain the source code , or human-readable version of the software, often written in a higher level programming language . This scheme is often referred to as closed source. While most proprietary software is distributed without the source code, some vendors distribute the source code or otherwise make it available to customers. For example, users who have purchased
6498-467: The "kernel", whose primary purpose is to implement processor- and architecture-dependent functions, and the "executive". This was designed as a modified microkernel , as the Windows NT kernel was influenced by the Mach microkernel developed by Richard Rashid at Carnegie Mellon University, but does not meet all of the criteria of a pure microkernel. Both the kernel and the executive are linked together into
6612-509: The Alpha NT 5 (Windows 2000) release had reached RC1 status. On January 5, 2011, Microsoft announced that the next major version of the Windows NT family will include support for the ARM architecture . Microsoft demonstrated a preliminary version of Windows (version 6.2.7867) running on an ARM-based computer at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show . This eventually led to the commercial release of
6726-703: The Alpha architecture in favour of adopting the then-new Itanium architecture. The porting began in late 2001, and the first boot on took place on January 31, 2003. The first boot consisted of booting a minimal system configuration on a HP i2000 workstation, logging in as the SYSTEM user, and running the DIRECTORY command. The Itanium port of OpenVMS supports specific models and configurations of HPE Integrity Servers . The Itanium releases were originally named HP OpenVMS Industry Standard 64 for Integrity Servers , although
6840-554: The CPU, as in Windows 3.1 Windows applications (although MS-DOS applications were preemptively multitasked in Windows starting with Windows/386 ). Notably, in Windows NT 3.x, several I/O driver subsystems, such as video and printing, were user-mode subsystems. In Windows NT 4.0, the video, server, and printer spooler subsystems were moved into kernel mode. Windows NT's first GUI was strongly influenced by (and programmatically compatible with) that from Windows 3.1; Windows NT 4.0's interface
6954-625: The Free Software Foundation. This includes software written only for Microsoft Windows, or software that could only run on Java , before it became free software. Most of the software is covered by copyright which, along with contract law , patents , and trade secrets , provides legal basis for its owner to establish exclusive rights. A software vendor delineates the specific terms of use in an end-user license agreement (EULA). The user may agree to this contract in writing, interactively on screen ( clickwrap ), or by opening
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#17327725447607068-510: The I/O database and scheduling data), and the routines which operate on these structures. The Kernel is typically described as having three major subsystems: I/O, Process and Time Management, Memory Management. In addition, other functionality such as logical name management, synchronization and system service dispatch are implemented inside the Kernel. OpenVMS allows user-mode code with suitable privileges to switch to executive or kernel mode using
7182-752: The NT codebase's directory structure and filenames matched that of the MICA codebase. Instead of a lawsuit, Microsoft agreed to pay DEC $ 65–100 million, help market VMS, train Digital personnel on Windows NT, and continue Windows NT support for the DEC Alpha. Windows NT and VMS memory management , processes , and scheduling are very similar. Windows NT's process management differs by implementing threading , which DEC did not implement until VMS 7.0 in 1995. Like VMS, Windows NT's kernel mode code distinguishes between
7296-698: The V3.0 release, all compatibility-mode utilities were replaced with native implementations. In VAX/VMS V4.0, RSX AME was removed from the base system, and replaced with an optional layered product named VAX-11 RSX . A number of distributions of VAX/VMS were created: With the V5.0 release in April 1988, DEC began to refer to VAX/VMS as simply VMS in its documentation. In July 1992, DEC renamed VAX/VMS to OpenVMS as an indication of its support of open systems industry standards such as POSIX and Unix compatibility, and to drop
7410-537: The V9.1 Field Test, making it available to VSI's customers and partners. V9.1 shipped as an ISO image which can be installed onto a variety of hypervisors, and onto HPE ProLiant DL380 servers starting with the V9.1-A release. During the 1980s, the MICA operating system for the PRISM architecture was intended to be the eventual successor to VMS. MICA was designed to maintain backwards compatibility with VMS applications while also supporting Ultrix applications on top of
7524-402: The VAX architecture, including: These VAX architecture mechanisms are implemented on Alpha, Itanium and x86-64 by either mapping to corresponding hardware mechanisms on those architectures, or through emulation (via PALcode on Alpha, or in software on Itanium and x86-64). The OpenVMS Executive comprises the privileged code and data structures which reside in the system space. The Executive
7638-757: The VAX connection since a migration to a different architecture was underway. The OpenVMS name was first used with the OpenVMS AXP V1.0 release in November 1992. DEC began using the OpenVMS VAX name with the V6.0 release in June 1993. During the 1980s, DEC planned to replace the VAX platform and the VMS operating system with the PRISM architecture and the MICA operating system. When these projects were cancelled in 1988,
7752-613: The Windows NT driver model, and is incompatible with older driver frameworks. With Windows 2000 , the Windows NT driver model was enhanced to become the Windows Driver Model , which was first introduced with Windows 98 , but was based on the NT driver model. Windows Vista added native support for the Windows Driver Foundation , which is also available for Windows XP , Windows Server 2003 and to an extent, Windows 2000 . Microsoft decided to create
7866-416: The box containing the software ( shrink wrap licensing ). License agreements are usually not negotiable . Software patents grant exclusive rights to algorithms, software features, or other patentable subject matter , with coverage varying by jurisdiction. Vendors sometimes grant patent rights to the user in the license agreement. The source code for a piece of proprietary software is routinely handled as
7980-492: The changes included using the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) to boot the operating system, reimplementing the functionality previously provided by Alpha PALcode inside the kernel, using new executable file formats ( Executable and Linkable Format and DWARF ), and adopting IEEE 754 as the default floating point format. As with the VAX to Alpha port, a binary translator for Alpha to Itanium
8094-595: The changes needed to decouple VMS from the VAX architecture included the creation of the MACRO-32 compiler, which treated VAX MACRO as a high-level language , and compiled it to Alpha object code , and the emulation of certain low-level details of the VAX architecture in PALcode , such as interrupt handling and atomic queue instructions. The VMS port to Alpha resulted in the creation of two separate codebases: one for VAX , and another for Alpha. The Alpha code library
8208-452: The collaboration ultimately fell apart. IBM continued OS/2 development alone while Microsoft continued work on the newly renamed Windows NT. Though neither operating system would immediately be as popular as Microsoft's MS-DOS or Windows products, Windows NT would eventually be far more successful than OS/2. Microsoft hired a group of developers from Digital Equipment Corporation led by Dave Cutler to build Windows NT, and many elements of
8322-658: The company's planned introduction of UltraSPARC models in 1995, but neither version was sold to the public as a retail product. Only two of the Windows NT 4.0 variants (IA-32 and Alpha) have a full set of service packs available. All of the other ports done by third parties (Motorola, Intergraph, etc.) have few, if any, publicly available updates. Windows NT 4.0 was the last major release to support Alpha, MIPS, or PowerPC, though development of Windows 2000 for Alpha continued until August 1999, when Compaq stopped support for Windows NT on that architecture; and then three days later Microsoft also canceled their AlphaNT program, even though
8436-585: The design reflect earlier DEC experience with Cutler's VMS , VAXELN and RSX-11 , but also an unreleased object-based operating system developed by Cutler at Digital codenamed MICA . The team was joined by selected members of the disbanded OS/2 team, including Moshe Dunie . Although NT was not an exact clone of Cutler's previous operating systems, DEC engineers almost immediately noticed the internal similarities. Parts of VAX/VMS Internals and Data Structures , published by Digital Press , accurately describe Windows NT internals using VMS terms. Furthermore, parts of
8550-407: The establishment of the company, as well as the development of VSI's own Itanium and Alpha releases of OpenVMS V8.4-x. The x86-64 port is targeted for specific servers from HPE and Dell , as well as certain virtual machine hypervisors . Initial support was targeted for KVM and VirtualBox . Support for VMware was announced in 2020, and Hyper-V is being explored as a future target. In 2021,
8664-430: The executable image into the same process, transfer control to the image, and ensure that control is transferred back to CLI once the image has exited and that the process is returned to its original state. Because the CLI is loaded into the same address space as user code, and the CLI is responsible for invoking image activation and image rundown, the CLI is mapped into the process address space at supervisor access mode,
8778-481: The first version of which, Windows NT 3.1 , was released on July 27, 1993. Originally made for the workstation , office, and server markets, the Windows NT line was made available to consumers with the release of Windows XP in 2001. The underlying technology of Windows NT continues to exist to this day with incremental changes and improvements, with the latest version of Windows based on Windows NT being Windows 11 in 2021. The name "Windows NT" originally denoted
8892-531: The four privilege levels of OpenVMS in software since only two of x86-64's privilege levels are usable by OpenVMS. The first boot was announced on May 14, 2019. This involved booting OpenVMS on VirtualBox, and successfully running the DIRECTORY command. In May 2020, the V9.0 Early Adopter's Kit release was made available to a small number of customers. This consisted of the OpenVMS operating system running in
9006-550: The hardware and system resources of the computer. The Windows NT kernel is a hybrid kernel ; the architecture comprises a simple kernel , hardware abstraction layer (HAL), drivers, and a range of services (collectively named Executive ), which all exist in kernel mode. The booting process of Windows NT begins with NTLDR in versions before Vista and the Windows Boot Manager in Vista and later. The boot loader
9120-447: The late 1960s, computers—especially large and expensive mainframe computers , machines in specially air-conditioned computer rooms—were usually leased to customers rather than sold . Service and all software available were usually supplied by manufacturers without separate charge until 1969. Computer vendors usually provided the source code for installed software to customers. Customers who developed software often made it available to
9234-619: The legal status of software copyright , especially for object code , was not clear until the 1983 appeals court ruling in Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp . According to Brewster Kahle the legal characteristic of software changed also due to the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 . Starting in February 1983 IBM adopted an " object-code -only" model for a growing list of their software and stopped shipping much of
9348-597: The major technological advancements that it had introduced to the Windows product line, including eliminating the 16-bit memory access limitations of earlier Windows releases such as Windows 3.1 and the Windows 9x series. Each Windows release built on this technology is considered to be based on, if not a revision of Windows NT, even though the Windows NT name itself has not been used in many other Windows releases since Windows NT 4.0 in 1996. Windows NT provides many more features than other Windows releases, among them being support for multiprocessing , multi-user systems ,
9462-487: The names OpenVMS I64 or OpenVMS for Integrity Servers are more commonly used. The Itanium port was accomplished using source code maintained in common within the OpenVMS Alpha source code library, with the addition of conditional code and additional modules where changes specific to Itanium were required. This required certain architectural dependencies of OpenVMS to be replaced, or emulated in software. Some of
9576-616: The operating system, due to developers being used to developing on x86 chips, Windows NT 3.1 was initially developed using non-x86 development systems and then ported to the x86 architecture. This work was initially based on the Intel i860 -based Dazzle system and, later, the MIPS R4000-based Jazz platform. Both systems were designed internally at Microsoft. Windows NT 3.1 was released for Intel x86 PC compatible and PC-98 platforms, and for DEC Alpha and ARC -compliant MIPS platforms. Windows NT 3.51 added support for
9690-617: The operating system. Since Windows Vista, the Windows installation files, as well as the preinstallation environment used to install Windows, are stored in the Windows Imaging Format . It is possible to use the Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) tool to install Windows from the command line and skip the GUI installer. It has been suggested that Dave Cutler intended the initialism "WNT" as
9804-538: The pre-production quality releases of OpenVMS AXP confused some customers, and was not repeated in the subsequent ports of OpenVMS to new platforms. When VMS was ported to Alpha, it was initially left as a 32-bit only operating system. This was done to ensure backwards compatibility with software written for the 32-bit VAX. 64-bit addressing was first added for Alpha in the V7.0 release. In order to allow 64-bit code to interoperate with older 32-bit code, OpenVMS does not create
9918-681: The primary command language interpreter (CLI) of OpenVMS since the first release. Other official CLIs available for VMS include the RSX-11 Monitor Console Routine (MCR) (VAX only), and various Unix shells . DEC provided tools for creating text-based user interface applications – the Form Management System (FMS) and Terminal Data Management System (TDMS), later succeeded by DECforms . A lower level interface named Screen Management Services (SMG$ ), comparable to Unix curses , also exists. Over
10032-482: The product packaging. One of the main purposes of NT is hardware and software portability. Various versions of NT family operating systems have been released for a variety of processor architectures, initially IA-32 , MIPS , and DEC Alpha , with PowerPC , Itanium , x86-64 and ARM supported in later releases. An initial idea was to have a common code base with a custom Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for each platform. However, support for MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC
10146-429: The profitability of software development. Proprietary software generally creates greater commercial activity over free software, especially in regard to market revenues. Proprietary software is often sold with a license that gives the end user right to use the software. OpenVMS OpenVMS , often referred to as just VMS , is a multi-user , multiprocessing and virtual memory -based operating system . It
10260-712: The public without charge. Closed source means computer programs whose source code is not published except to licensees. It is available to be modified only by the organization that developed it and those licensed to use the software. In 1969, IBM, which had antitrust lawsuits pending against it, led an industry change by starting to charge separately for mainframe software and services, by unbundling hardware and software. Bill Gates ' " Open Letter to Hobbyists " in 1976 decried computer hobbyists' rampant copyright infringement of software, particularly Microsoft's Altair BASIC interpreter, and asserted that their unauthorized use hindered his ability to produce quality software. But
10374-613: The same kernel. MICA was ultimately cancelled along with the rest of the PRISM platform, leading Dave Cutler to leave DEC for Microsoft. At Microsoft, Cutler led the creation of the Windows NT operating system, which was heavily inspired by the architecture of MICA. As a result, VMS is considered an ancestor of Windows NT , together with RSX-11 , VAXELN and MICA, and many similarities exist between VMS and NT. A now-defunct project named FreeVMS attempted to develop an open-source operating system following VMS conventions. FreeVMS
10488-538: The single loaded module ntoskrnl.exe ; from outside this module, there is little distinction between the kernel and the executive. Routines from each are directly accessible, as for example from kernel-mode device drivers. API sets in the Windows NT family are implemented as subsystems atop the publicly undocumented "native" API ; this allowed the late adoption of the Windows API (into the Win32 subsystem). Windows NT
10602-561: The software from becoming unsupported and unavailable abandonware . 3D Realms and id Software are famous for the practice of releasing closed source software into the open source . Some of those kinds are free-of-charge downloads ( freeware ), some are still commercially sold (e.g. Arx Fatalis ). More examples of formerly closed-source software in the List of commercial software with available source code and List of commercial video games with available source code . Proprietary software
10716-484: The software. This is particularly common with certain programming languages . For example, the bytecode for programs written in Java can be easily decompiled to somewhat usable code, and the source code for programs written in scripting languages such as PHP or JavaScript is available at run time . Proprietary software vendors can prohibit the users from sharing the software with others. Another unique license
10830-402: The source code available. Some licenses for proprietary software allow distributing changes to the source code, but only to others licensed for the product, and some of those modifications are eventually picked up by the vendor. Some governments fear that proprietary software may include defects or malicious features which would compromise sensitive information. In 2003 Microsoft established
10944-476: The source code is made available . Governments have also been accused of adding such malware to software themselves. According to documents released by Edward Snowden , the NSA has used covert partnerships with software companies to make commercial encryption software exploitable to eavesdropping, or to insert backdoors . Software vendors sometimes use obfuscated code to impede users who would reverse engineer
11058-606: The source code, even to licensees. In 1983, binary software became copyrightable in the United States as well by the Apple vs. Franklin law decision, before which only source code was copyrightable. Additionally, the growing availability of millions of computers based on the same microprocessor architecture created for the first time an unfragmented and big enough market for binary distributed software. Software distributions considered as proprietary may in fact incorporate
11172-457: The system over multiple physical machines. This allows clustered applications and data to remain continuously available while operating system software and hardware maintenance and upgrades are performed, or if part of the cluster is destroyed. VMS cluster uptimes of 17 years have been reported. In April 1975, Digital Equipment Corporation embarked on a project to design a 32-bit extension to its PDP-11 computer line. The hardware component
11286-413: The x86-64 port was demonstrated running on an Intel Atom -based single-board computer . As with the Alpha and Itanium ports, the x86-64 port made some changes to simplify porting and supporting OpenVMS on the new platform including: replacing the proprietary GEM compiler backend used by the VMS compilers with LLVM , changing the boot process so that OpenVMS is booted from a memory disk, and simulating
11400-526: Was OpenVMS Galaxy , which allowed the partitioning of a single SMP server to run multiple instances of OpenVMS. Galaxy supported dynamic resource allocation to running partitions, and the ability to share memory between partitions. In 2001, prior to its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard , Compaq announced the port of OpenVMS to the Intel Itanium architecture. The Itanium port was the result of Compaq's decision to discontinue future development of
11514-429: Was apparently licensed only to 3.1 versions of Windows software. The NT version number is not now generally used for marketing purposes, but is still used internally, and said to reflect the degree of changes to the core of the operating system. However, for application compatibility reasons, Microsoft kept the major version number as 6 in releases following Vista, but changed it later to 10 in Windows 10. The build number
11628-468: Was based on a snapshot of the VAX/VMS code base circa V5.4-2. 1992 saw the release of the first version of OpenVMS for Alpha AXP systems, designated OpenVMS AXP V1.0 . In 1994, with the release of OpenVMS V6.1, feature (and version number) parity between the VAX and Alpha variants was achieved; this was the so-called Functional Equivalence release. The decision to use the 1.x version numbering stream for
11742-493: Was built on top of the L4 microkernel and supported the x86-64 architecture. Prior work investigating the implementation of VMS using a microkernel-based architecture had previously been undertaken as a prototyping exercise by DEC employees with assistance from Carnegie Mellon University using the Mach 3.0 microkernel ported to VAXstation 3100 hardware, adopting a multiserver architectural model. The OpenVMS operating system has
11856-419: Was cancelling plans to ship 64-bit Windows for Alpha. Because of this, Alpha versions of Windows NT are 32-bit only. While Windows 2000 only supports Intel IA-32 (32-bit), Windows XP, Server 2003, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 each have one edition dedicated to Itanium-based systems. In comparison with Itanium, Microsoft adopted x64 on a greater scale: every version of Windows since Windows XP (which has
11970-526: Was code named Star ; the operating system was code named Starlet . Roger Gourd was the project lead for VMS. Software engineers Dave Cutler , Dick Hustvedt , and Peter Lipman acted as technical project leaders. The Star and Starlet projects culminated in the VAX-11/780 computer and the VAX/VMS operating system. The Starlet project's code name survives in VMS in the name of several of the system libraries, including STARLET.OLB and STARLET.MLB . VMS
12084-556: Was first announced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) as VAX/VMS ( Virtual Address eXtension/Virtual Memory System ) alongside the VAX-11/780 minicomputer in 1977. OpenVMS has subsequently been ported to run on DEC Alpha systems, the Itanium -based HPE Integrity Servers , and select x86-64 hardware and hypervisors . Since 2014, OpenVMS is developed and supported by VMS Software Inc. (VSI). OpenVMS offers high availability through clustering —the ability to distribute
12198-510: Was later dropped in Windows 2000 . Broad software compatibility was initially achieved with support for several API "personalities", including Windows API , POSIX , and OS/2 APIs – the latter two were phased out starting with Windows XP. Partial MS-DOS and Windows 16-bit compatibility is achieved on IA-32 via an integrated DOS Virtual Machine – although this feature is not available on other architectures. NT has supported per-object (file, function, and role) access control lists allowing
12312-708: Was made available, allowing user-mode OpenVMS Alpha software to be ported to Itanium in situations where it was not possible to recompile the source code. This translator is known as the Alpha Environment Software Translator (AEST), and it also supported translating VAX executables which had already been translated with VEST. Two pre-production releases, OpenVMS I64 V8.0 and V8.1, were available on June 30, 2003, and on December 18, 2003. These releases were intended for HP organizations and third-party vendors involved with porting software packages to OpenVMS I64. The first production release, V8.2,
12426-754: Was mostly written in VAX MACRO with some components written in BLISS . One of the original goals for VMS was backward compatibility with DEC's existing RSX-11M operating system. Prior to the V3.0 release, VAX/VMS included a compatibility layer named the RSX Application Migration Executive (RSX AME), which allowed user-mode RSX-11M software to be run unmodified on top of VMS. The RSX AME played an important role on early versions of VAX/VMS, which used certain RSX-11M user-mode utilities before native VAX versions had been developed. By
12540-438: Was one of the earliest operating systems to use UCS-2 and UTF-16 internally. Windows NT uses a layered design architecture that consists of two main components, user mode and kernel mode . Programs and subsystems in user mode are limited in terms of what system resources they have access to, while the kernel mode has unrestricted access to the system memory and external devices. Kernel mode in Windows NT has full access to
12654-630: Was originally designed to be used and managed interactively using DEC's text-based video terminals such as the VT100 , or hardcopy terminals such as the DECwriter series. Since the introduction of the VAXstation line in 1984, VMS has optionally supported graphical user interfaces for use with workstations or X terminals such as the VT1000 series. The DIGITAL Command Language (DCL) has served as
12768-435: Was produced for workstation and server computers. It was commercially focused — and intended to complement consumer versions of Windows that were based on MS-DOS (including Windows 1.0 through Windows 3.1x ). In 1996, Windows NT 4.0 was released, including the new shell from Windows 95 . Eventually, Microsoft incorporated the Windows NT technology into the Windows product line for personal computing and deprecated
12882-418: Was redesigned to match that of the brand-new Windows 95 , moving from the Program Manager to the Windows shell design. NTFS , a journaled, secure file system, is a major feature of NT. Windows NT also allows for other installable file systems; NT can also be installed on FAT file systems, and versions 3.1, 3.5, and 3.51 could be installed HPFS file systems. Windows NT introduced its own driver model,
12996-424: Was released in February 2005. V8.2 was also released for Alpha; subsequent V8.x releases of OpenVMS have maintained feature parity between the Alpha and Itanium architectures. When VMS Software Inc. (VSI) announced that they had secured the rights to develop the OpenVMS operating system from HP, they also announced their intention to port OpenVMS to the x86-64 architecture. The porting effort ran concurrently with
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