The opinions expressed in this section are those of the individual writer and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the editor or publisher of OS/2 CONNECT. NOTE: Letters may be edited for inappropriate or offensive language or clarity.
1. PC OEMs exclusively preload Windows, with few exceptions. This means that all "new PC users" go to Windows automatically, no matter if something else (like OS/2 Warp) is more reliable and user-friendly. By itself, this is not a problem; but, it keeps hardware and software makers from having an economic incentive to develop for superior platforms.
2. Software developers code exclusive Windows-only applications, with few exceptions, meaning that there are fewer choices for non-Windows platforms. The leverage MS used to threaten and browbeat vendors to keep them from writing for OS/2 was and is illegal, particularly for a monopoly. Selling an OS/2 SDK for $2800 and refusing to refund the money after the MS-IBM split, but substituting the Windows SDK, is plainly bait-and-switch.
3. Data file formats are designed by MS to lock people into massive all-or-nothing upgrades, and to prevent them from sharing complex files with their friends, neighbors, and even business associates who use other platforms and applications. While this is not illegal, it can only succeed as a result of the other two sets of crooked acts.
Of these three, the file format problem is the hardest to address, because you don't go to the store to buy a file format, any more than you go to the store to buy a second hand for your clock. It's something that comes built-in. Because it's a self-contained elemental part of the application, it's not something that can easily be regulated.
As a result, the DOJ case is barking up the wrong tree. OS/2 users are not likely to find preloaded OS/2 systems, native OS/2 applications,or open file formats as a result of the DOJ court action.
The case should address the first two problems listed above, and the third one will be more likely to get solved by marketplace action. MS wants to be like the car racer who grabbed the lead lap, then had the race declared over before the other racers could have a chance to compete. Innovation should never be stifled just because one company gains a temporary "edge" and is willing to go to any lengths to keep that edge, including breaking the law.
If you are interested in helping fill this need, please contact me at 408/541-9168, Fax 408/541-9258, or e-mail me directly.
#1 Does Tom have ANY familiarity with a little concept called "Optimized for Windows"? Does he know what that term REALLY MEANS?
#2 The current scenario with Microsoft vs. the government has much more to do with $$$$ than it does compassion for PC end users, ISP's, or even fair trade.
What is really uncanny is the incredible resemblance between the current MS lawsuit and the Rockefeller proceedings not quite 100 years ago.
To gain rapid "first hand" familiarity with Rockefellers proceedings, a Good book available is "TITAN, The story of John D. Rockefeller Sr."
Greatly distilled, Both MS and Standard Oil were unique in that they pioneered the industries that they rapidly grew to dominate on a global basis. As each technology was "spawned" (because each was new, innovative, and contained considerable "wow" appeal), no one could even fathom where the "fully developed" business was leading, both in terms of economic potential as well as the "centerpiece of society" that both companies ultimately enjoyed. Both companies, while publically traded, the "lions share" of stocks remained closely held by those near the "captains chair."
Enter the dilemma: When smothered under that much wealth, no matter how hard you might try (R&D, venture capital, etc.) SUBSTANTIAL portions of the USA CASH FLOW BECOMES UNTAXABLE through conventional means. I don't know personally what the filthy rich do with this tidy wad, but for the sake of the point I'm making, let us assume that they get together on Thursdays and Sundays and run barefoot through it. Unfortunately, this particular pastime is untaxable.
Our wonderful free democracy can only tolerate such hedonism for only so long, and then when they've reached their point of "maximum frustration," all they need is a good altruistic cause, and the headhunt is on.
I say headhunt as opposed to witchhunt, because a witchhunt has "as yet unspecified" targets, where as the other has a very clear target.
Whats that? You say the "leader of the free world, the grand example of truth, justice, and equality for all" just doesn't operate with such hideous greed, or such single minded pursuits? Oh yeah? Well, remember "National Healthcare"? Where's yours? If the "goals" were really THAT universally necessary, then by God, we'd have it if it KILLED us. In reality, that issue, as well as the MS issue is the government's resentment over not being able to control that huge chunk of change. If the government can get the money into the hands of people who might actually spend it, well the way this country is set up, it's the same thing as controlling it, since you can tax it each time it changes hands through one means or another.
National Healthcare failed because there was not a central enough villan to justify the actions necessary to aquire the means to control the money (remember, the HMO's did very little advertising at all until "National Heathcare" started getting tossed around. But when things started to heat up, all these companies that people seldom ever heard of except when they filled out forms at a new place of employment started running television commercials showing elders with arthritis, and kids with scrapped knees.
I think that the guy who is in for the surprise of his life is Bill Gates. He is thinking that the Republican Bush is going to "Do the right thing" for business, and give MS a "pass" out of all this.
Think about it, did you ever see a Republican who did not salivate over the prospect of billions of dollars?
For that matter, whoever wins the upcoming elections will put a lock on their re-election hopes simply by prying that vast fortune loose and then taking credit for the good times that follow.
It is my sense that what we are dealing with in this individual and his company and like-minded business people is something far more significant than appears to be widely recognized. I think the situation is not apocalyptic, but it is far more criminal and especially treasonous than it seems to be generally accounted. Your mention of being a Freemason, who gave us our fine system, invites me to mention these insights. I am not a Freemason but many ancestors were and I certainly honor the tradition and its bearers. I am a theologian, and long-time OS/2 user. Anyhow, thanks and best wishes always.
In reply to Tom Anderson's IN DEFENSE OF MICROSOFT...
The fact that Microsoft is a tough competitor does not justify the government's intervention into the marketplace by using the non-objective, fundamentally unjust "anti-trust" laws against Microsoft.
True, but "tough competition" is not the same as "abuse of monopoly power." Legitimate government functions include being the umpire for all players and ensuring that EVERYONE sticks to the rules (even the big boys).
The facts are that IBM has been incompetent in meeting the demands of marketplace, even though it has the superior product.
There are no rules against incompetence.
The solution to Microsoft is more competition, a more vigorous capitalism. Supporters of OS/2 should put the blame where it belongs: on IBM and not on Microsoft.
I don't think all or even most of the blame goes there. It goes to the feet of a people (in the US, Australia and elsewhere) which has lost its ethical foundations to the point where the law of the jungle is accepted as not only normal but "right". (Gordon Gecko: "Greed is good!" )
How do you ensure "more competition" and "more vigorous capitalism" when MS, IBM, GM, Standard Oil etc. are so big that they dominate all others in the field? Without a disinterested but powerful umpire and a set of rules that everyone agrees with (very important), all we have is the law of the jungle, operated by bullies.
The other, more general point, should be made: when one group of businessmen try to initiate the use of force against their competitors by supporting government invention into the economy, they may advance their immediate goals, but they will ultimately destroy the economy and their own business.
I hope you mean government in-ter-vention. "Invention" is a topic for another day
May I ask if you would like to see a ball game played without umpires and their rules? Let's
just allow the captains and coaches to change the rules as they go along, and let the biggest,
toughest players walk all over their opponents. What kind of game would we have - a good one
or a bad one? Which kind of game - with or without umpires - ensures that the games are worth
playing and watching? Which would actually destroy the game?
In the interests of informed and rational debate.
I do not hate Microsoft or Bill Gates. I just wish they would stop trying to 'bully' other operating systems out of the market. Freedom of choice is having choice to chose from. 'Innovation' should not come at the cost of freedom of choice.
While this has been going on, IBM has made three significant announcements with respect to OS/2:
To even the most casual observer, it is clear that the sentiment of the third of these announcements jars with the first two. In fact, if IBM had actively planned to undermine the DOJ as it was about to publish its proposed redress against Microsoft, it could hardly have done a better job with more exquisite timing.
I don't suppose there are many luncheon invitations winging their way from Washington to Armonk at the moment.
No, we stick with OS/2 because we are like people who drive classic automobiles, eat fine food instead of fast food, and who know the difference between good music and great music: "THEY JUST DON'T MAKE 'EM LIKE THAT ANYMORE!"
The facts are that IBM has been incompetent in meeting the demands of marketplace, even though it has the superior product. The solution to Microsoft is more competition, a more vigorous capitalism. Supporters of OS/2 should put the blame where it belongs: on IBM and not on MicroSoft.
The other, more general point, should be made: when one group of businessmen try to initiate the use of force against their competitors by supporting government invention into the economy, they may advance their immediate goals, but they will ultimately destroy the economy and their own business.
I can't think of a quicker way to turn off the technically oriented audience that OS/2 Connect is directed toward, then to inject it with this political nonsense, which, if polls are any indication, the vast majority will disagree with anyway. As they say in the NG's, stay on topic. :-)
Each month you announce a 'release' of OS/2 CONNECT , but, it is not a monthly newsletter or magazine with a set of features. Apart from an editorial and letters to the editor it's more like an on-going links web site.
I check in each time but find mostly the same old thing...
When the box rolls out in November (whether upgrade or installable) it will be my OS of choice.
It is frequently updated and looks like it offers the support you are looking for.
FixPak 13 gives Warp 4 client users the Aurora kernel. There are several notable longstanding issues that are fixed by this fixpak.
I think IBM is gearing up to compete in the desktop marketspace again; currently, they're using us a guinea pigs to file off the rough edges on a new client release before they make it.
When I consider the truly great difference between my system now and the way it was behaving before, the rough edges don't bother me; and I had some very rough edges indeed. After a great deal of work on my part, I got rid of all the rough edges. Having done so, I can in all honesty say that my system performs and behaves far better than it ever has in the past. Netscape problems are a memory; I've even had Communicator do the fatal "startup" crash and was able to open a command window and kill the process. Before FP13, when this kind of Communicator crash happened, all I could do was listen to the swap file blow up until the system crashed do to lack of swap space; >50% of the time, even CAD was not enough to stop it. Now, it just dies, and I can use go.exe (an old process killer) to kill the zombie process and _recover all the memory taken by the crashing process_. To me, this is a very big deal.
Having been following the discussions on comp.os.os2.bugs about this fixpack, all I can say is that the IBMers have acted with complete class througout. Personally, I'm very impressed.
If you have some space available on your ThinkPad, I would respectfully suggest that you consider making another partition and doing a fresh install of Warp and apply FixPak 13, SDDse 7.01, and the latest drivers for your sound chipset from the DDPAK, and try it out. It was painful for me to get it all up and running, but once I had it running it quickly became clear that it was a major improvement in the system. A fresh reinstall solved all my problems with the fixpak.
Take it easy!
Please note the spam-proofer in my email address...
I am only kidding, aren't I? Aren't I?
I am at this moment using Windoze 98! I much prefer either of the OS/2 versions I have installed, and was going to sign up for ibm.net, when I heard IBM had sold it to AT&T!! Looking at the att.net site, it doesn't look like they support OS/2. Perhaps your AT&T service is also through Windoze... (or a Win-OS/2 session, but I really would like a non-Windows 3.1 ISP; I use CompuServe as my ISP, which works fine with Win-OS/2.)
In the early 60s, the board correctly foresaw the business benefits inherent in centralizing data processing and launched the System 360 to capitalize on the opportunity. However, by the early 70s, technology prices had started to fall... A small company called Digital Equipment saw the potential of distributing processing power from central site to department and launched the VAX/VMS system as their solution. This also heralded the rise of the ISV. The board of IBM did not pay much attention to this development, basking as they were in the success of the System 360. But there were shrewder minds in middle management and there sprang up a number of unrelated offerings aimed at this new opportunity, such as the Series 1, the System 3 - even a rack mounted mainframe! These efforts culminated in the ill-conceived and badly executed 8100 program, which, by the early 80s, had left several billion dollars of red ink on IBM's bottom line - and one of the major reasons for its failure was that it paid scant attention to the ISV community. By this time a new phrase had entered the IT lexicon: "IBM has made DEC into a $bn company".
Stung into action by the company's public display of incompetence and the large amount of money being spent in a marketplace where IBM had no coherent offering, the board finally swung its weight behind a single program to compete head on with DEC. The result was the AS/400 system which was launched 12 years after DEC staked their claim. It paid careful attention to the ISVs and secured for IBM a respectable share of the midrange marketplace. (When IBM was dragged kicking and screaming into the Unix world a year or so later, this attention to ISVs was also very evident.)
But the price of technology continued to fall... This time it was a small company called Microsoft which saw the opportunity to further distribute processing power from department to desktop. Once again the board missed the significance of what was going on but once again there sprang up a number of offerings aimed at this market such as the IBM PC, DOS, DisplayWrite and OS/2. Once again these culminated in a poorly executed program - Warp 3 - which once again did not pay sufficient attention to the ISV community. In parallel with all this, the company oversaw a constant decline of its 100% hardware PC share in 1985 into a 5% share by the year 2000 - and with all the attendant red ink. The only difference this time around is that I haven't actually heard anybody say that IBM has made Microsoft into a $bn company! The reason for IBM's lackluster performance at the desktop is that, unlike the central site and midrange marketplaces, where IBM has a system solution around which to build, there is no "PC system solution", which leaves individual products isolated against competition. Like it or not, the market has moved closer to the end user and IBM hasn't.
The mid-range story suggests that for IBM to capture a respectable share of the desktop (and, more importantly, of the large amount of money being spent in this marketplace), there is no option but to bite the bullet and compete head on with Microsoft. Some people will say it is too late, but these Jonases said the same thing after the 8100 debacle.
There are two reasons why such a venture would be successful, just as similar reasons prevailed in the mid-range marketplace fifteen years ago:
Perhaps some of the welcome news/rumors about Warp 5 are at last suggesting that the board is beginning to wake up to the size of the opportunity which is passing it by.
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