From: brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Unprofessional Letter from IBM.
Date: 12 Oct 92 00:11:03 GMT
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept

In article <1992Oct11.204046.36108@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> sjb5@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (STACY JOHN BEHRENS) writes:
>In article <1992Oct11.072139.2438@fcom.cc.utah.edu>, brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (B
>rian Sturgill) writes:
>>In article <1992Oct10.234626.49230@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> sjb5@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (S
>TACY JOHN BEHRENS) writes:
>>>In article <1992Oct6.235117.27484@fcom.cc.utah.edu>, brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu
>(B
>>>rian Sturgill) writes:
>>>>
>
>(lots of stuff irrelevant to what is below deleted)
>
>>>>Brian
>>>>
>>>>(Oh... shouldn't they have put in a bunch of TM's and (R)'s?  Especially
>>>>for CompuServe... it's not their own.)
>>>
>>>Honestly, sometimes I wonder about you Brian and what you did to make IBM mad
>>>at you.  I'm not anything resembling an official developer, and I get good
>>>information in a timely manner from IBM.  I have recieved everything from a
>>
>>I and every other registered OS/2 user received that coupon book.  It
>>was overblown...  and you should see the prices they want to charge
>>developers to be in it!  (Though I guess in fairness it probably costs
>>a lot to send that to all users... still... isn't that an argument
>>to not send out such overblown glossies?)
>
>Are you claiming that it wasn't of any use?  I certanly thought so.  That
>aside however, That was an *example*  I can give many more if you like.  It
>was an example and nothing more.  Please to not take such trivial things so
>seriously.

No, I am claiming that this is a perfect example of IBM's lack of
understanding of how to handle a mass-market product.  Fancy, bound, coupon
books my be appropriate for a market were you pay hundreds of thousands or
millions of dollars for a product, but for $100 products, it's not rational.

...
>>Geez!  where did I ever say that no one should develop for OS/2?
>>_I_ develop for OS/2.  I'm only unhappy that my efforts will not meet
>>a large user base, as IBM has not seen fit to recruit ISV support for OS/2.
>>At this point, as IBM has grossly mishandled OS/2, I think I'd rather it
>>just be a niche Big Blue shop product. IBM had a good chance, but they've
>>largely blown it.  Perhaps they can convince me at the developer conference
>>they're still in the game... we shall see soon.  At the moment I feel
>>OS/2 is likely only to confuse the market for a bit.  The real battle
>>will be between NT, UnixWare, Solaris and maybe NextStep.
>>OS/2 is missing too many features for a good high-end OS, and IBM has done
>>nothing to show it's capable of catching up.
>
>Specifically you have been claiming that there is little reason to develop for

Where have I said that?  Remember I'm the one that loves native apps over
all else?  I have said that IBM's over-compatibilty features will hurt
the native app market, this is unfortunately true.

>OS/2 because it runs windows stuff.  That isn't really what I meant to say
>however.  (I apologize for that)  You have been ranking on OS/2 sometimes
>rightfully, more often not, and trying to make IBM look basically like the
>antichrist.  It is getting oon my nerves more than a little.  MS has made more

My "ranking on IBM" is far less than the "ranking on Microsoft" that goes
on in this group.  My main purpose is to point out that IBM is not an
angel, that they are every bit (if not more so) as responsible as Microsoft
for the IBM/Microsoft split, and that IBM has been incompetent in many
areas in its handling of OS/2.  This is not nearly the same thing as
making them out to be an antichrist.  Too many people in this group, yourself
included, have an unrealistic picture of IBM.  For many its a view they
formed of IBM in its heyday as a mainframe maker.  That view is inaccurate
today, and w.r.t to OS/2, outright wrong.

>than their share of mistakes with NT, but I have yet to hear you say peep
>about it.  Maybe you have and I missed it, but it probably was because it was
>drown out in your anti-IBM tirades.

With the exception of "slippages", and the unfortunate wording of the
announcement about the level of DOS support, I find few things about
Microsoft's handling of NT that could be construed as mistakes.

They've given it good publicity, gathered tons of ISV support, been
generally open about its release, have an excellent feature set, given
good access to development information, carefully solicited and listened
to ISV comments.  Really, they've done an excellent job to date.  No doubt
they'll make a few mistakes yet, but I doubt they'll give me reason to call
them incompetent.

IBM on the other hand has done the following:

Charged us large sums of money to acquire the OS/2 2.0 beta and technical
documentation (~ $700).  I started calling them about getting into
the beta program in early February.  They finally got us a copy
on March 29 or so, just a couple of days before the release of GA.
Fortunately in the interim an IBM employee loaned me his personal copy
of the LA diskettes, and emx came out.  Were it not for emx and this
act by an IBM employee, we would have never done this product.
The DAP refused to let us in -- as we're a research group, not an Inc,
and the time our spinoff company was only in process of forming, so
we were left out in the cold.
I spent about 2 weeks of work time simply getting things on order.

During this time we were told by IBM that the fastest and best
way to get OS/2 2.0 GA was to buy a copy of 1.3, so we did.
On APRIL 6th or so we sent out the proof of license.
On JULY 7, we got a letter saying that I forgot to mark my choice
of diskette sizes.  I corrected this and sent it out July 11 or so.
(I was at the NT Developers Conference, when the letter arrived.)
In early to mid-August, the upgrade finally was received.

TCP/IP is a must in our environment.  After days of trying, I finally
found a vendor (800-SOFTWARE) that actually knew how to get it for
me.  I put it on order.  As usual it has to be special ordered...
it takes weeks for it to come in.  When it does come in, it does not
work.  I call IBM support, they want to know my customer ID number.
I of course don't have one.... they say go through the people
that sold it to me.  Those people contact IBM... IBM says that TCP/IP 1.2
does not yet work with OS/2 2.0, but people on the net say the
have a "CSD" (a new term to me at that time.) In the end I persue
three different simultaneous tracks and finally land a copy
of the CSD.  It sort of works... I'm happy for the moment, but
I easily loose 60 hours of work time in getting TCP/IP up and
working (this includes the time spent getting the fix).
During the process I was insulted by an IBM employee because
I had a clone with an ISA bus.  The CSD fixed the base package,
but I was unable to use NFS.

The development tools beta came with a date that expired 30 days
after the GA release came out. I ordered the tools as quickly
as they were available.  IBM however took several weeks to get
them to me, thus for a time we were without legal rights to a
development environment.  I was charged about $700 for WorkSet/2.
While the tools were on order, IBM dropped the price to $295...
we still had to pay the $700.

Fortunately I won a copy of OS/2 2.0 GA at local OS/2 rollout event, so
we were able to start using GA in early April.  Note there were only
5 copies given away to a crowd of several hundred.  We simply got
lucky.  IBM also sent us a copy for being in the beta program...
a "feature" they failed to mention at the time they told us to buy
1.3.

While better than the betas, GA proved to be buggy, had no Super VGA drivers,
and slow Windows support.  But as IBM seemed to be promising quick
solutions to these problems, I took the free copy of OS/2 home and started
running it there.  In late May my wife gets a machine of her own...
we decide to buy TCP/IP and an addition copy of OS/2.  The bug fix is
hopefully just around the corner, though the rumors say it's delayed.
Here, 6 months + later, the problems remain... my wife and I no longer use
OS/2 at home.. Window 3.1 proved superior in terms of speed and driver
support.  We now even have need for Windows 3.1 support, so it looks
like it will be December before we could possibly switch back.  In the
end I suspect we will simply go directly to NT... probably once the first
beta becomes stable.

When TCP/IP 1.2.1 came out, I received a notification letter from IBM
saying where and how to send in the proof of licences, as I greatly
wanted NFS to work, I sent the proofs of licenses in immediately.
Much to my surprise it took IBM less than two weeks to get it back to
me.  Unfortunately they failed to send the upgrade for NFS. So I grabbed
the invoice and looked for the number to call to resolve the problem.
THERE WAS NO SUCH PHONE NUMBER!  After many hours of calling IBM support,
in the end my problem was solved by a person in the TCP/IP group,
I found by grepping old USENET messages.

Sometime this summer, I forget the exact date (June?).  I discovered that
CSet/2 had no source profiler.  This was the last straw... they charged
us $700 for this toy environment.  (BTW, they're selling at this
price level again, they let the $295 expire.)  I composed a long note
listing all my problems with OS/2 and posted in comp.os.os2.programmer.
After MANY phone calls with various people in IBM, some of the message
seems to have gotten through, but in the end I decided that IBM's handling
of OS/2 was so incompetent that I had grave doubts about the wisdom of
our developing for it.  Sometime shortly thereafter I went to the Microsoft
Windows NT Developer's Conference.  Microsoft was far from incompetent.
In fact they were bending over backwards to help ISV's... a far cry
from the treatment I had receieved from IBM.  Understand I'm not
saying that I could not find plenty of people that WANTED to help
me at IBM, it's just that most seemed unable to do so, and it was a real
hassle getting through to anyone there.

For example, a member of the Compiler group addressed my post, especially
about the issue of an optimizer bug, in spite of my reluctance due to
problems with getting IBM to follow through, I agreed to track the optimizer
bug to a reasonably sized piece of code, and sent that in.  The bug
apparently was fixed -- but nobody sent it to me... and I was in no mood
to remind them to do it.  A couple of months later this same individual
saw a posting of mine complaining about the optimizer bug.. and made
the unfortunate remark that I should report.. well the long and short
was in the end that indidual found I had reported it, and started trying
to send me the fix.  The first attempt to send it to me resulted
in it being trapped by IBM bureacracy.  A second attempt for still undetermined
reasons failed to.  In the end I got the fix from comp.binaries.os2.
Installing that patch did indeed fix that one problem, but several
others optimizer bugs still exist.

SUMMARY:
This list of my "adventures" with IBM is far from complete.  I have NEVER had
a satisifying experience from IBM support.  I still don't have a reasonable
professional development environment available under OS/2.
People on this group often seem to wonder why I'm "ranking on IBM".
Perhaps this list will help them to understand.
Some wonder why I would spend the amount of time I do posting the
criticizism I do.  In truth the amount of time I've spent doing this
is miniscule compared to the amount of time IBM has caused me to
waste developing for OS/2.
The combined time wasted fighting through the DAP, IBM "support", the 
slowness of WorkSet/2, compiler bugs, poor documentation, etc. easily
amounts to 25% of the time spent in the development effort.
This combined with lack of marketing for OS/2 and the GA release of OS/2
being more like a beta in terms of quality, is it no wonder I'm no
longer much of a fan of OS/2?


...
>>>stuff about "no developers" is nothing more that a lie)  IBM has produced a
>>
>>I don't think I've ever said "no developers", but I certainly have said,
>>and mean, that OS/2 has poor ISV support.  I am far from alone in this
>>view, in fact outside this group, I would say the view is largely universal.
>>In fact this reminds me... several times you've said you can come
>>up with a list of OS/2 ISV's.  Ok... do so!  Let's see a list of
>>ISV's, the products they are producing, and an approximate time frame.
>>
>You most certainly did and that is a quote.  (From about one week back)  As

Well if I did, then I'm sorry... I'm sure it was merely an overstatement...
I certainly have never tried to prove that OS/2 has no developers... I'm
one... thus it's false.  The fact remains... OS/2 has weak ISV support.

>for the list.  OK it will be in my next post.  (Sorry I couldn't put it here
>but it would be overly difficult.

I look forward to the posting.

>
>>>good product.  Not one without its flaws, but certainly it has a lot of
>>>strengths too.  MS has produced good products and they too have their flaws
>>>and strengths.  It would do you well to admit this fact now and again and at
>>>least put on some semblance of objectivity.
>>
>>All I did was post the _verbatim_ listing of the letter IBM sent with
>>the confirmation of my registration... how is this unwarranted FUD or a lie?
>>The letter said all those things like all the license for the code expires
>>12/92.  I hope it doesn't apply to everything, but the letter really didn't
>>say.
>
>The support for the beta code expires in december.  This is true and common
>knowledge.  Nor is it FUD or a lie.  The actual release will occur before then
>and then there is little reason to support the beta code, no?  In any case are
>you really intending to throw it away?  I doubt it.  There is too much good
>stuff there to do so.  Heck I want a copy myself.  (though I need a CD-ROM
>drive first.  Guess it will have to wait)

Indeed I will "throw it away"; I'll no longer have legal right to use it.
Hopefully the letter (which was obviously flawed) was flawed about the
part saying that all the code will expire December 15, but I don't know.

>Stacy John Behrens

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