From: rcain@netcom.com (Robert Cain)
Subject: How to bet $100,000 on OS/2 and lose it.
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 19:21:03 GMT

One year ago I had an idea.  Due to the design of OS/2 I thought it
would be a nifty idea to produce a product that put a PostScript
interpreter in OS/2 in a transparant way.  I informally obtained rights
to commercially market Ghostscript and discussed with IBM obtaining the
source code to the "Generic PostScript Printer Driver" since there is
no conceivable way to write such a beast from scratch given the
voluminous, if content free, documentation in the area of printer
drivers.  My plan was to port the interpreter to OS/2 and reduce it
down to a module that could be integrated into the driver such that all
would be transparent.  One would treat it as any old PostScript printer
object and applications would not know the difference.  The driver
would consult a configuration file at initialization to determine which
physical printer was the actual target and as a consequence load the
appropriate physical printer driver with the interpreter and
communicate with it via the IPC mechanisms.  Besides the port,
re-organizing the interpreter to communicate with physical printer
drivers in this way was the biggest job.

I joined the Developers Assistance Program and through that arm
obtained a verbal assurance that there would be "no problem" obtaining
said source code since there was nothing proprietary.  Based on this
assurance and the license I had negotiated for using the interpreter I
quit my day job to live off my savings and develop this product which I
was going to call SimpleScript.

Monthly I checked with my IBM rep to see how it was going with regard
to obtaining the code and was assured that it was just taking time due
to the "normal" red tape.  I succeeded in making the port work and
isolated the functionality required to integrate into the driver by
early August and began to press IBM for the promised source code.  To
my amazement and consternation I was told that the original contact
that had made the promise was retired and wrong.  In fact the source
code was owned by Microsoft and could not be released to me by IBM.

As a consequence I am out the $30k of savings I supported myself with
and the $70k lost income from the period.  To add insult to injury they
are now requiring the return of the PS/2 system loaned me to test the
product on an IBM system.  I'm stonewalling.  I no longer have any
interest in developing for OS/2 but would like their fuck up to cost
*them* something.

I shelved the project at that point and decided to move my efforts to
NT some time in the future since MS is making the equivalent source
code available as a standard part of their driver development kit.  I
advise the rest of you to do the same.  IBM still has way too much to
learn about developer support.  Lots of splash but little content and
some silly notion about making a profit on their developers tools.
Beware.

Thanks IBM.  I knew I could count on you.

Bob

-- 
Bob Cain    rcain@netcom.com   408-358-2007

    'The meek shall inherit the earth--the rest of us will move on..'
                                                    Sameer Parekh


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