Re: Not "Satanism;" realism.

[stan johnson <sjohnson@gwi.net>]

** Reply to note from mstone@vc.net Sat, 2 Jan 1999 22:21:21 -0500 
 I believe the industry would be much _more_ developed today had 
 IBM held onto the PC architecture copyrights, as they originally 
 intended -- the industry would not have gravitated artificially to their 
 hodgepodge design. The PC architecture had the very odd 
 distinction of both carrying IBM's imprimaturs and effectively falling 
 into the public domain. This only worked out well for Microsoft and 
 the clone companies.  
   
 >Obviously speculating about what might have happened had 
 > events been different from what they were can never come to  
 >certainty.  
 
			<snip>   	 
 
 A much more robust, diverse and competitive industry would have  
 emerged, IMHO. 
 
I'd be interested in your reasoning. IBM does not, AFAIK, have a   
reputation for willingly reducing prices <g>. I would surmise that,   
absent competition from clones, the prices would be *VERY* high for   
PCs or whatever was available. After all, the fact that M$ is an   
extortionist monopoly of limitless greed does not make IBM the jolly   
old elf. 
 
To the extent that your comments first quoted above are speaking of   
rational design and well worked-out interrelationships, I would be   
inclined to agree completely. IBM has many faults, but I've not heard   
that poor engineering is one of them. If IBM had retained   
ownership/control somehow, but licensed at little or no cost, things   
might well have been much better. The microchannel, like the beta   
tape format, would, IMO, be (probably is) an excellent subject for   
university discussion. Some would add OS/2 to that honored list. 
 
I don't understand however, if this is your meaning, how we'd be better   
off if IBM's standards had been closely held, and other companies had   
developed different standards. Wouldn't this lead to much greater   
fragmentation of the market, less competition within a track, and   
incompatibilities magnitudes greater than plague folks now? I thought   
the general thinking was that true standards, not held in thrall by a   
single company and especially not proprietary, was the desideratum? 
 
 


-- 
Stan Johnson    TeamOS/2
sjohnson@gwi.net