In , on 12/12/04 
   at 05:12 AM, enorbet  said:


>One thing, I 
>didn't mean that IBM gave away code, I meant that they signed a deal 
>because they saw it in their interest to continue on the path of 
>distancing themselves from OS/2

It depends on which they you are talking about.  IBM is hardly anywhere
near the coherent, monolithic entity that firms like Microsoft appear to
be.  I suspect that the OEM agreement was signed because the folks that
signed it had sales quotas to meet, strange though that may seem.  I am
also sure that there are more than a few folks within IBM that would have
preferred for the agreement to never have happened.

IBM, on the whole, wants OS/2 to go away.  This is not accomplished by
writing OEM contracts that, at some level, commit IBM to providing some
level of continuing support for OS/2.  If IBM really just wanted to
"distance" themselves from OS/2, they would have sold the product line,
just as they did with the PC business.

>and to a few in the know go the added 
>discomfort of realizing it occurred with a superior product.

This happens all the time.  Fact is, in business, a product must be more
than just technically superior, to succeed in the market.

>   Actually I do wonder why IBM didn't pursue a stronger legal stance 
>regarding the "conversion" of MS OS/2 v 3 NT into MS Windows NT.

Best I can tell, there was never any legal basis to persue anything like
this.  See Andrew's description which pretty much matches my understanding
of the subject.

FWIW, NDAs are tricky to enforce because they often conflict with right to
work laws.  If all I take to a new employer is my knowledge, and nothing
physical, my former employer really has little to say about what I can and
can not do.  They have the protections of patents and copyrights, but the
have these regardless.

>I know this is old news but my 
>curiosity for info from the inside still exists,

FWIW, I don't claim to have all that much inside info.

>and frankly flares 
>almost every time I am forced to use Windows, fortunately lately almost 
>always on somebody elses machine, usually wracked with literally 
>hundreds of instances of malware and virii.

I just tell them they have options.  If they insist on repeating that they
have no choice, I smile and tell them that they can believe this if they
choose and I change the subject.  For me, like is too short to get angry
about stuff like this.

Regards,

Steven

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Steven Levine"   MR2/ICE 2.60b
#10183 Warp4/FP15/14.100c_W4
www.scoug.com irc.fyrelizard.com #scoug (Wed 7pm PST)
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