[vox] OS/2 and Linux, why has IBM changed?

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Thu 08 May 03, 11:07 AM, Kevin Hooke <kevin@kevinhooke.com> opined:
> Quoting Ken Herron <kherron@newsguy.com>
> >During the MS antitrust trial, some information about these negotiations
> 
> Quoting Peter Jay Salzman <p@dirac.org>
> >what exactly was IBM's killer product in the mid 90's?   nobody used
> >typewriters.  nobody really used OS/2.
> Actually Pete, as someone else just mentioned, OS/2 was widely used by large
> corporations in Europe during the early 90's. Royal Sun Alliance (an
> insurance company) used OS/2 on the desktop and also for backend servers
> almost exclusively until only a few years ago, and I believe Lloyds Bank
> were another big user on the desktops in their branch offices. I also heard
> that in the early 90s some of the London area Air Traffic Control was also
> run on OS/2. I'm sure there are/were many others as well..


as for specific examples, i knew quite a few business that ran inventory
on a timex sinclair.   :)   the point is that OS/2 was a largely
unadopted OS.

adoption rates of an OS is a non-linear thing.  the more people that use
it, the even more people that want to start using it.   OS/2 clearly
never reached the critical mass needed for droves of people to start
waiting in line to purchase it at the stores.

as far as i can remember, OS/2 users was a bunch of super die-hard fans
who loved their OS fiercely and couldn't fathom why the people outside
their small group didn't install it.   actually, if you think about it,
the *BSD users of today are the OS/2 users of yesteryear...  ;-)

in short, i don't think anybody would actually accuse OS/2 of wide
spread adoption.  i think the present is evidence of the past.   :)

pete

-- 
GPG Instructions: http://www.dirac.org/linux/gpg
GPG Fingerprint: B9F1 6CF3 47C4 7CD8 D33E 70A9 A3B9 1945 67EA 951D