In , on 12/11/04 
   at 04:03 AM, enorbet  said:

>   Why is this news?

It's not.  This is all being discussed in the context of what near term
and long term effect the sale of the PC business to Lenovo will have on
OS/2 support on IBM PCs.

>It seems to me that well over two years ago IBM 
>wanted to ditch OS/2 altogether

IBM has been very clear about what they would prefer to do with OS/2. 
Fortunately, IBM does not get to make choices unilaterally, so the
timeline seems to have stretched far beyond what it appears IBM would
prefer.

>and as long as 7 years ago there were 
>numerous IBM employees that didn't have the slightest clue that OS/2 
>existed or was a current IBM product.

In a company as large as IBM, I don't consider this is all that relevant. 
I'm sure a large percentage of IBM employees don't know the names of the
OSs that run on IBM mainframes.

>cinched when IBM supported the "handoff" of code to eCS and that other 
>company who's name I keep forgetting because they apparently have done 
>very little with it.

This is a rumour at best.  It's simply not true.  I like to believe that
if IBM had made source code available to Serenity, I would have access to
it on a need to know basis.

What happened is that Serenity signed an OEM agreement with IBM that
allows them to do value add and resell OS/2 under the eComStation brand
name.  I don't know the contract details, but I know what is available to
the folks developing the eCS releases.  It's binary only with the
exception of whatever happens to be written in REXX or happens to be text
files.

>   Why does this matter?  It seems to me that any business users, many 
>of whom stick with OS/2 specifically because it does not require 
>constant spiralling hardware upgrades like some others do,

This is not why they stick with OS/2.  They are doing all new development
on exactly the hardware and software platforms you allude to.

They stick with OS/2 for existing applications because they have decided
that it is less expensive to pay IBM for the cost of continued OS/2
support than to pay the cost to covert these applications to a new
platform.

This will change when or if IBM decides to stop taking their money for
this work or when the application needs sufficient enhancements to justify
the cost of coversion.

>If not, they can explore eCs.

While I would like this to happen, more likely, they will explore a VM
solution with a long term plan to convert the applications to a different
platform.

>it rules out most other users as long as we avoid the "upgrade fever" 
>promoted by Wintel.

When I look at my friends that use windows, I rarely see "upgrade fever"
except among the techies.  What I see is they run the windows version that
comes with their hardware until they get new hardware.  I see the same
things with my business customers that use window too.  They don't deploy
XP on existing hardware.  They deploy new hardware with XP.

>  It is worthy of mention that many small businesses still use DOS 
>programs because they don't need individually multi-tasking 
>workstations.  While that number is dwindling, they still exist.

This is true.  I sometimes wonder what the percentage is.  FWIW, DOS is
still widely used to develop embedded applications because it is a cost
efficient platform for a certain subset of applications.

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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