[Am-info] Re: adopting alternative OSes

[Mitch Stone]

All of which goes to my original point: IBM had the ability to stand 
toe-to-toe with Microsoft, but elected not to do so (on more than one 
occasion). The company's internal politics may work as an explanation 
but not as an excuse.

Do I think it's a damn shame they lacked the courage? Yes, of course. 
But any way you cut it, it was their choice.

On Sunday, April 27, 2003, at 04:32 PM, madodel@ptdprolog.net wrote:

> In <540851C8-78F3-11D7-BA98-003065A24662@accidentalexpert.com>, on
> 04/27/03 at 02:00 PM,
>    Mitch Stone <mitch@accidentalexpert.com> said:
>
>> I can't pretend to speak to internal IBM management issues, except to
>> observe that IBM's PC division was/is part of the greater company, and
>> if the company was committed to OS/2, so would the PC division be
>> committed. (People do after all generally prefer to keep their jobs.)
>
> Sorry but that is not how IBM works.  Its a bunch of fiefdoms only
> concerned about their own bottom line and bonuses.  Its truly amazing 
> the
> company manages to do as well as it has.  The top management encouraged
> competition.  There is no unified IBM organization.  True they all 
> suck at
> general marketing as a rule, but they love to schmooze with CEOs, so 
> they
> are only good at selling into mega corporations.  But then that means 
> the
> CEO makes a decision based on what he hears from his local IBM 
> marketing
> contact.  These bastards have actually told companies not to buy OS/2, 
> and
> this goes as far back as 1996/97, and maybe back to 1995.
>
>
>> I don't entirely agree that the IBM name worked against OS/2 in the 
>> OEM
>> world. It was after all the IBM name which give credibility to the
>> entire PC clone market. As we all certainly remember, PC clones were  
>> for
>> years marketed as "IBM-PC compatibles" and shipped with IBM PC-DOS  
>> (aka
>> MS-DOS). What did work against IBM was of course Microsoft's  
>> half-nelson
>> on the OEM industry. But, if any company had the  wherewithal to break
>> that lock, it was IBM. In order to do so, they  would have been 
>> forced to
>> make choices we probably all probably agree  they should not have been
>> forced to make, that is, between Windows and  OS/2. They would have
>> needed the guts to get the glory and  unfortunately they didn't want 
>> the
>> glory badly enough.
>
> The OS/2 people did.  They busted their asses to make it the best damn
> product out there.  It ran rings around that half-baked windows95.   
> But
> the hardware people were in Gate's pocket.  IBM had sold a big system 
> to
> Bank of Brazil a few years ago.  From what I heard they could have sold
> thousands of servers and IBM workstations as well.  All they had to do 
> was
> preload OS/2 on them.  They refused.  Compaq was willing to do it to 
> get
> the sale.  Compaq has a whitepaper on their site about how they were 
> the
> "Premier" hardware provider for OS/2.
> <http://www.compaq.com/support/techpubs/whitepapers/ecg1240798.html>  
> But
> that was only in selected markets.  You won't find OS/2 preloaded on a
> consumer Compaq.  No one wants to cross microshaft.  And I'm sure no 
> one
> wanted an "IBM OS/2" splash screen coming up on every boot of their
> non-IBM pcs.  PC-DOS was not sold to OEMs initially.  Only MS-DOS.  
> That's
> how Gate's raked in his billions.  IBM didn't see any market in the
> non-IBM clones, so they let microsoft have that market entirely to
> themselves.  Can you believe how stupid and shortsighted they were?
>
   -----------
   Mitch Stone
   mitch@accidentalexpert.com

   In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and
   the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.
   -- Groucho Marx