From: brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Subject: Re: OS/2 2.01 Beta
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Distribution: na
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 92 23:34:32 GMT

In article <1992Oct10.220520.14135@muddcs.claremont.edu> tlilley@jarthur.claremont.edu (Thomas (Ted) Lilley) writes:
>In article <1992Oct9.210502.778@mdd.comm.mot.com> wu@mdd.comm.mot.com (Philip Wu) writes:
>>In <1992Oct9.171907.3735@solaris.rz.tu-clausthal.de> hochstae@allfiwib1.wiwi.uni-marburg.de (Christoph H. Hochstaetter) writes:
>>
>>>DOS and WIN16 is not too good in the pre-beta SDK, but do you think,
>>>that MS will ship the release version with poorer support for DOS &
>>>WIN16 than OS/2 2.0 currently has?
>>
>>Maybe not Windows, but they already stated that DOS support won't be
>>as good as under OS/2.  No big loss really.
>>
>>Phil
>
>I can't believe you said that, Phil.  I thought MS learned its compatibility
>lesson along with IBM...i.e. OS/2 1.x.  Well, it doesn't really matter whaat
>we think the importance of DOS support is.  The market will tell us whether
>it is or isn't important, sometime next year.
>
>Ted

I doubt seriously that OS/2 1.X's main problem was poor DOS support.
OS/2 1.X had many, many problems.  It was designed for 286's but
required huge amounts of resources (1.3 was an exception, but OS/2 by
then had a bad rep... and there was Windows 3.0).  It was buggy.  It
was slow.  It had no applications base.  It was highly proprietary and
cost a lot.  It ran (or so most everybody believed) only on IBM's
over-priced, under-powered hardware.

NT's DOS support will be better than 1.X's -- IBM's OS/2 2.0 support, while
good for some, is more of an overreaction by a frighten bureacracy, than
a well thought out feature.  Consider also the testing/maintenace burden
IBM is picking up for OS/2 2.0 -- DOS -- even down to the hardware
bits level, Windows 2.X, 3.X, Win32s, Win32.  It's possible in the
near future that OS/2 may run well everyone else's apps, but it mainly
means there is less incentive for people to make apps for the small 2.0
native market.

Further the large number of subsystems + IBM's need to maintain its
reputation for supporting old features for a long period of time, will
mean that OS/2 development will lag more modern OS's. The back-
compatibility burden will be huge.  The amount of back-compatibility
also means a large overhead in disk space needs, more complicated installation,
and more complexity in the subsystem APIs, and even the WPS in order to
support it all.  Worse Windows 3.X, Win32s, and Win32 are moving targets...
OS/2 2.0 developer's main jobs will be simply keeping up.
Any major new feature in OS/2 will have to be geared to be compatible with
the other platforms.  Imagine they have to support two of many things already!
Two font systems, two multimedia systems, two sets of printer drivers.
What seems like a good idea at the moment, will quickly become a burden.
IBM would better spend its time recruiting ISV support.

While all users expect their past investment not to disappear immediately,
experience in the Macintosh community shows that most apps still working
after a major upgrade is sufficient.  Word from contacts inside Microsoft
seem to indicate that DOS support in the beta is already well above the
acceptable level.  (Only a few more days till the beta ships!!!)

Brian
-- 
C. Brian Sturgill                I strongly encourage you to read Ross Perot's
University of Utah                             United We Stand
Center for Software Science             How we can take back our country.
brian@cs.utah.edu; CIS: 70363,1373  (It's more important than OS/2 vs NT! :-))
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy