Key Windows man leaves Redmond
One of the most important figures in Microsoft's history, David Weise, is to leave Redmond after an illustrious career with the software giant. Weise was one of the developers responsible for a technical breakthrough upon which much of Microsoft's success today is founded.
In 1987 IBM and Microsoft were pouring vast resources into OS/2, the successor to MS-DOS. Back then, Microsoft's Windows was a functionally-crippled GUI running on top of an operating system that offered no pre-emptive multi-tasking or long file names and that was limited by DOS's 640kb memory limit.
After Weise's breakthrough, Windows was still a functionally-crippled GUI running on top of an operating system that offered no pre-emptive multi-tasking or long file names, but it was no longer limited by DOS's 640kb memory limit. Windows could take advantage of the 80286 Protected Mode.
Author Andrew Schulman detailed the kludge and its implication in Unauthorized Windows 95, published exactly a decade ago. And it was from this small breakthrough that Microsoft out-marketed IBM, gradually slipping free from Big Blue.
