2 Feb
2007
2 Feb
'07
8:58 a.m.
On 2 Feb 2007 at 11:16, Dave McGuire wrote:
Oh nonono. I'm sorry to have to correct you
here Warren, but
nothing could be further from the truth. First, OS/2 was written by
Microsoft and sold to IBM.
At one time, at least as far as the world outside of Microsoft was
concerned, Microsoft was a big booster of OS/2. From "The OS/2
Notebook" (Microsoft Press, 1990):
Gates: "OS/2 is our top priority"
Many developers (myself included) , partially on the basis of Gates'
and Cannavino's statements, plunked down very hefty chunks of cash as
pre-subscription to the OS/2 2.0 Development kits being promised by
Microsoft. When MS annouced that they would not be pursuing OS/2
2.0 and shipped pre-releases of NT instead, there were threats of
lawsuits unless a full refund was promptly paid.
Believe me, the quality of developer's documentation for NT was
substantially below that of OS/2, although the first NT code (at
least the kernel stuff) was very nicely written and commented. My
reaction on seeing the NT floppy driver for the first time was "How
can they make something so simple look so complicated?"
OS/2 was FAR from stillborn...it was in use in damn
near every bank
office in the country for a very long time, with probably half of
those installations likely still in place...I know the two banks I go
to regularly still run it on at least one desktop. OS/2 is an
extremely widely deployed operating system...you just can't buy it in
Best Buy, so people think it's dead...or never lived in the first
place. It was only discontinued 1.5 years ago.
Many people would be surprised to find that it was widely deployed in
ATMs. Better OS/2 than Windows, I suppose.
Where can one find a copy of the last OS/2 release? I'd like a copy
for my archives.
Cheers,
Chuck