From: nevries@accucx.cc.ruu.nl (Nico E de Vries)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: IBM, Microsoft, and OS/2 -- a history.
Date: 9 Oct 92 08:53:18 GMT
Organization: Academic Computer Centre Utrecht

In <1992Oct7.184429.10057@fcom.cc.utah.edu> brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:

>...
>Well first of all if they were only my arguments, then I could understand
>you skepticism, but they're no just mine.  Cringley's book make this
>argument almost explicitly.

Which proves nothing. Just take some magazines and notice some authors
in them have completely conflicting arguments. It won't be hard to
find some of them having opinions nearly equal to yours (you have
done this before, you know how it works). The same applies to books.

>...
>a blatant reversal on IBM's part.  Blatant reversals inside companies
>occur all the time.  I would be the greatest about of energy inside
>IBM (especially in the time frame we're discussing) is spent tetering
>back and forth between options.

That is an assumption based on an oppinion. Many people will believe
MS is worse in this respect. IBM said OS/2 a long while ago and
is still saying it. MS has changed from OS/2 3.0 to Windows NT.

>The facts appear to be these:
     ^^^^^  Huh? You call opinions facts?

>In 1989 or early 1990, Microsoft and IBM had a falling out.
>Robert Cringley seems to believe it was over the move to 32-bit OS/2 2.0.
                          ^^^^^^^ So much for "fact".

>In the early history of OS/2 the following seems to have occurred
>(Cringely says this, but I've heard it before.)
>Microsoft wanted to put what would be OS/2 on 32-bit platforms first.
>IBM, fearing it would cut into it's ASA/400 line, suppressed
>going to 386's.  Their weak presence in the 386 market spurred
>Compaq and others to produce the now popular 386 "AT".

There are several arguments for not making the OS 386 based. The
most important one is probably the large availability of the 286 and
the low availability of the 386 at the time OS/2 was planned. OS/2
1.0 was planned to be released long before it was released. You
can't blame IBM for not foreseeing the delays of MS. I can imagine
however Cringley's claim has some truth in it, but not it being the
major reason.

>IBM is the one that pushed for OS/2 1.3, Microsoft apparently wanted
>to abandon 286's and move to OS/2 2.0.  The two companies split.

I have seen too many articles with another story. I can't believe
you didn't read any of them. But in case you didn't let me tell you
another "story". Just as with your ones there are many people
believing them. I won't call them "facts" however. OS/2 1.3 is the
most reliably release ever made. Most people claim it is better
than 2.0. I'm one of them (but I also believe 2.01 will be
even better). Interesting is IBM did make 1.2 and MS did make
1.0 1.1 and 1.2. The official plan (this is a fact) was that
IBM would move on to OS/2 2.0 and MS to OS/2 3.0. OS/2 2.0 would
become what it is now (more or less), OS/2 3.0 would become
what NT will become, more accent to OS/2 than to Windows
of cource.

The major reason, according to many, MS abandoned OS/2 3.0 and
moved to Windows NT is marketing and independence of IBM. Notice
I personally believe that that is a smart business move. To
quote BYTE on this "Some observers ... question Microsoft's ethics",
article about how great NT is from Jon Udell in BYTE oct 1992. Recomended
BTW. I think, althought many will not agree with me, MS did the right
thing here. Both for MS and both for the mass market. I am a strong
believer in competition and a single vendor OS (OS/2 3.0) would have
made us just as depending on MS as we were from MS-DOS until DR-DOS
arived.

>The split (and I don't see how you can argue with this -- the
>split was jointly announced in September 1990) occurred
>formally in 1990, well over a year before OS/2 2.0 was shipped.
>I don't understand how Microsoft can have "abandoned" an OS that
>is a year and a half from completion, when you have IBM saying
>formally that they will be doing the work from then on.
>It is clear that MS and IBM simply had "irreconcilable differences"
>and went their separate ways.

You are nearly right. Of course we both know MS has abandoned
support for OS/2 1.3 as well (look at the way they handled SDK
and MSC owners).

>Now comes the part you called "insane". IBM employees that
>inherited doing OS/2 2.0 after the split wanted to push the 386-
>only version too.  I can certainly remember an IBM employee having a
>tough time explaining to me in summer 1990 why OS/2 was being shipped
>designed around the 286.  The inventive group that took over
>OS/2 development, coupled with IBM's changing view of itself,
>and fear that Microsoft might have been right is what caused the reversal.

It is always easy to say now what should have been done in the past.
Give the origional planned OS/2 release date and the availability
of the 286 vs 386 at that time I think IBM would have been stupid
to make the program not 286 compatible at that time. NOW we know
that would not have mattered but THEN it was imposible to know.

>The reasons behind the MS/IBM split are hard to prove, but Cringley's
>version makes sense, given the companies respective personalities.
>And the fact that IBM was so late to enter the 386 market.
>(A 386-only version of OS/2 in 1989-90 would penalize their customers
>and help the clone makers.)

Agreed. They make sense, just like some other aproaches to what happened.

>Brian

Nico E. de Vries
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