Mario Semo wrote in a message to Brandt Everett:

 MS> But, there are some large organizations which started
 MS> porting to PPC with the beta toolkits from DevCon. IMO they
 MS> would be very unhappy with a 'its dead' message. So, IBM
 MS> trys to do it this way. 

IBM has two serious legal problems.  First, when a development project
large enough to have its own budget is killed, accounting rules force the
expenses to be decapitalized, meaning that they must be charged immediately
against the books, thereby decreasing income and assets.  Second,
announcing products that are never marketed is illegal under anti-trust
law, because it has a chilling effect on the market.

IBM plays the first game all the time, and it is why absurd things such as
TopView are still on the official inventory in case someone would be so
foolish as to try to buy it.  As to the second issue, IBM got themselves
into big trouble on this, among other things, and entered into a consent
decree with the government in 1956 promising not to do it.  Of course,
since that time, many other software companies -- particularly Microsoft --
have taken to preannouncing all sorts of vaporware, and it is likely that
they will also someday find themselves in court as IBM did.
 
-- Mike


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