RE: Why

[aphro <nate@firetrail.com>]

On Mon, 6 Dec 1999, Paul McHale wrote:

pmchal >This was the true beginning of ms domination.  Big blue saw this and tried
pmchal >to enter with OS/2.  They screwed up and got in bed with ms.  A losing
pmchal >proposition for many.  I believe you either work for ms or are in ms's way.

IBM didn't seem to have a whole lot of choice.  From what i've read IBM
had the best licensing deal for win3.1 that anyone had, somewhere around
$8 bux a copy.  They did not get a licensing deal for win95(which they
thought was more important then OS/2) until the 11th hour, because
microsoft did not like them selling a competing product at the same
time.  IBM ended up paying in the hundreds of millions to just get a
contract with MS to distribute win95.  IBM (like everyone else would
too) saw that OS/2 was a losing battle if they wanted to keep selling
win9x. They could of gone head to head, IBM has quite a bit of pull, but
they acted timid and as a result the OS/2 (Client) approached its
death.  It's really too bad..maybe IBM will release the source to OS/2
someday, GPL it if they never plan on using it again.  It can only help
the rest of the world(including MS).

as for win95 in business, well from surveys (and my dad who used to work
at hewlett packard) win95 was a long delayed deployment..still lots of
win3 users out there.

pmchal >the OS.  One could either say they failed to fill the void and ms didn't.
pmchal >Either way, it created the very environment ms needed and they took it.

reminds me of the movie, 'Pirates of Sillicon Valley'. great movie, when
whats his face, the guy who made the mac, not steve jobs but the other
guy.  He went into Hewlett Packard's office offering this new PC to them
and they had to keep from laughing in his face..big mistake :)


pmchal >Another interesting point.  If commercial unix had taken over the PC, would
pmchal >we have been better off?  Their prices and customer relations we a joke.
pmchal >Very limited vendor compatibility.  We bought them because we had to.  Oddly
pmchal >enough, microsoft spanked them into line a little.  Now ms needs their come
pmchal >uppance.

I don't think we'd be any better or any worse off, probably be in the same
boat with a diferent captain.  I saw a recent Performance computing
article(Best unix moments or something) and it talked about AT&T raising
the price of their Unix to "$40,000 per CPU" which sparked The free
software movement.  Initially they were going to battle commercial unix
vendors, little did anyone realize back then that the battle wouldn't even
begin for another 20 years, and it would be against a totally different
foe.

pmchal >Linux is now keeping the monster at bay.  Without Linux, I don't want to
pmchal >think of what ms would be doing.

yeah, it would only be a matte rof time before they decided 'oh I want the
embedded market' and out go companies like QNX like lights, and 'oh I want
the web server market' and 'oh I want the CAD/CAM market'.  Let the beast
rest un challenged for too long and it will get too strong, but we can't
attack it head on, have to wear it down, over time, and watch it wither
and die.

not that i feal strongly about it or anything

:)

nate

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