Editing Workplace OS (section)

====GUTS====
In January 1991, there was an internal presentation to the IBM Management Committee of a new strategy for operating system products. This included a chart called the Grand Unification Theory of Operating Systems (GUTS) which outlined how a single [[microkernel]] underlying common subsystems could provide a single unifying architecture for the world's many existing and future operating systems. It was initially based in a procedural programming model, not object-oriented.<ref name="OWCPE book"/>{{rp|2–3}}<ref name="WorkplaceMicrokernelandOS"/> The design elements of this plan had already been implemented on IBM's [[IBM RS/6000|RS/6000]] platform via the System Object Model (SOM), a model which had already been delivered as integral to the [[OS/2]] operating system.

Sometime later in 1991, as a result of the Apple/IBM business partnership, a small exploratory IBM team first visited the Taligent team, who demonstrated a relatively mature prototype operating system and programming model<ref name="OWCPE book">{{cite book | title=IBM's Official OS/2 Warp Connect PowerPC Edition: Operating in the New Frontier | first1=Ken | last1=Christopher | first2=Scott | last2=Winters | first3=Mary Pollak | last3=Wright | publisher=IDG Books | location=Foster City, CA | date=1995 | isbn=978-1-56884-458-9 | oclc=832595706 }}</ref>{{rp|3}} based entirely on Apple's Pink project from 1987. There, GUTS's goals were greatly impacted and expanded by exposure to these similar goals—especially advanced in the areas of aggressive [[Object-oriented programming|object-orientation]], and of software frameworks upon a microkernel. IBM's optimistic team saw the Pink platform as being the current state of the art of operating system architecture. IBM wanted to adopt Pink's more object-oriented programming model and framework-based system design, and add compatibility with legacy procedural programming along with the major concept of multiple personalities of operating systems, to create the ultimate possible GUTS model.<ref name="OWCPE book"/>{{rp|4}}<ref name="n1" group=lower-alpha/>
{{quote box | width=95% | align=center | quote=GUTS defined [theoretical] operating system components similar to Taligent's [already existing] operating environment, only the components [in GUTS] were defined procedurally ... From the concept of shared services and Taligent's concept of object-oriented system frameworks, an object model evolved that represents ''the'' new, faster, and more reliable way of building operating systems. What's more, because procedural and object-oriented components can coexist in a microkernel-based operating system, the evolution to a completely object-oriented world could be staged.<ref name="OWCPE book"/>{{rp|3–4}}}}

Through the historic [[AIM alliance]], Apple's CEO [[John Sculley]] said that the already volume-shipping OS/2 and MacOS would become unified upon the common PowerPC hardware platform to "bring a renaissance to the industry".<ref name="too little, too late"/>

In late 1991, a small team from Boca Raton and Austin began implementing the GUTS project, with the goal of proving the GUTS concept, by first converting the monolithic OS/2 2.1 system to the Mach microkernel, and yielding a demo. To gain shared access to key personnel currently working on the existing OS/2, they disguised the project as the Joint Design Task Force and brought "a significant number" of personnel from Boca, Austin (with LANs and performance), Raleigh (with [[Systems Network Architecture|SNA]] and other transport services), IBM Research (with operating systems and performance), and Rochester (with the 64-bit, object-oriented worldview from [[AS/400]]). Pleased with the robust, long-term mentality of the microkernel technology and with the progress of the project, the team produced a prototype in mid 1992.<ref name="OWCPE book"/>{{rp|4}}<ref name="n2" group=lower-alpha/><ref name="WorkplaceMicrokernelandOS"/> The initial internal-development prototypes ran on x86-based hardware and provided a [[Berkeley Software Distribution|BSD Unix]] derived personality and a DOS personality.{{citation needed|date=September 2017}}