https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/threading-models-f...

In 1997, a group of vendors came together under the aegis of hardware manufacturer, Silicon Graphics, to formulate a new threading interface. Their common problem was that the primary operating systems of the time all imposed drastically different ways of programming for threads. UNIX employed Pthreads, Sun used Solaris threads, Windows used its own API, and Linux used Linux threads (until its subsequent adoption of Pthreads). The committee wanted to design an API that would enable a codebase to run without changes equally well on Windows and UNIX/Linux. In 1998, it delivered the first API specification of what was called OpenMP (In those days, the term ‘open’ was associated with the concept of support from multiple vendors-as in open systems-rather than with today’s implication of open source.)