Autor: Jakub Cebula (jcebula_at_comarch.pl)
Data: Tue 21 Sep 1999 - 19:55:03 MET DST
Szkoda, ze to juz koniec...
Informacje za: The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/
Posted 19/09/99 4:59pm by John Lettice
Wicked IBM execs bayonet ailing OS/2
At the last minute, IBM has torpedoed plans for a new OS/2 client from
Stardock
Systems, despite apparently having no plans for a new client of its
own. The decision,
made by IBM last Thursday, comes after six months of negotiation and
an agreement
in principle, so it looks suspiciously like IBM corporate would prefer
to see OS/2 dead
sooner rather than later.
According to Stardock Object Desktop product manager Brad Wardell his
company
had approached IBM in 1998,suggesting that Stardock license OS/2
technology on an
OEM basis and make a new client available. Stardock's proposal won
support from
OS/2 partisans within IBM, and six months were spent thrashing out the
details of the
product: "everything from potential names down to which minute
components would or
would not be included," says Wardell.
The culmination of this process took place last week, where the IBMers
in favour of the
deal made their pitch at executive level - and were told "nope."
Says Wardell: "The call has been made -- there will be no new client
from Stardock
and IBM has indicated that they have no plans for an OS/2 based client
of their own...
they have decided that it is currently not in IBM's or their
customer's interests to
license any current OS/2 technology on an OEM-basis... IBM has simply
finally made
the decision that a new OS/2 client would be in conflict with their
strategic directions."
So far, we can only speculate as to why the existence of what would
inevitably be a
relatively small number of updated OS/2 clients would conflict with
IBM's strategic
directions. IBM has made its intention of moving OS/2 users over onto
thin clients and
then magically disappearing them pretty clear for some years now, so
maybe having
OS/2 fat clients staying viable is seen as conflicting with this. Or
then again there
might be an outside chance that IBM doesn't want to do an OEM
licensing deal
because it intends to open source OS/2.
We confidently predict this will happen one day - but we can't help
noticing that IBM
doesn't generally get around to giving stuff away until it's too old
for most people to
care. It's the Smithsonian approach to open source... Ž
To archiwum zostało wygenerowane przez hypermail 2.1.7 : Tue 18 May 2004 - 15:23:41 MET DST