Microsoft Hampered OS/2, IBM Official Tells Court nytimes.com
Well, duh. It's hard to say whether Microsoft hampered it more while they were still partners with IBM or afterward. Then, there was the dirty tricks angle. Who was the guy mentioned here, Steve Bartko?
Soyring testified that Microsoft provides certain programming tools that software developers use to write programs that run on Windows machines. Developers rely on those tools, he said, but Microsoft forbids their use in writing software for other operating systems.
How can this be? Remember the words of the inimitable Reggie? Doesn't Microsoft make Visual C++? Or words to that effect. Forbidding cross compilation seems a bit strange, but that's life in Windows World.
As a result, Soyring said, if a company wants to create a version of, say, a word processing program for OS/2 computers, it would have to "recreate much of the application from scratch," making it difficult to "justify the cost of offering the application on OS/2."
Microsoft, in a statement Tuesday, said, "IBM made decisions with its OS/2 operating system that were not well received by consumers and did not make it easy for developers to make great applications for their platforms."
Yeah, yeah, like all the "great software" that runs for a while under Windows 95, until the whole thing falls apart under its own accord.
In November 1989, when IBM and Microsoft were still collaborating on OS/2, they designed it to run only on expensive computers with more memory than was typical at the time. Until hardware caught up, the companies said, customers could use Microsoft's new product, Windows. Eventually, however, the computing world turned to Windows, and Microsoft ended its partnership with IBM.
With a little help from certain undercover operations. I don't know, I think the concensus is that OS/2 still sucks less, even if it's dead for application development. As far as the "expensive computers" line, how many Win95 "upgrades" ever made it onto computers made before Win95 came out? Could Win95 get out from under its own feet on a machine with <32 meg, maybe a P133? But of course, Bill said that he had to wait for the hardware to catch up with Microsoft's "great software" to make the cutover to 32 bit code on 32 bit machines.
The government also played a short clip from the 20-hour deposition last summer of Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, in which he was asked about Microsoft's relationship with IBM. In an e-mail message last November, Gates wrote that he was unhappy with IBM because "the Java religion coming out of the software group is a big problem."
Java is the programming language created by Sun Microsystems that can be used on any operating system. As in previous parts of the deposition shown in court, Gates said he did not recall much about his e-mail message or about other topics on which he was questioned.
Gates did volunteer that he had wanted IBM to stop criticizing Microsoft, adding that he had "talked about rhetoric being lowered on both sides."
Rhetoric being lowered on both sides? That's a new one. Was this the same day Bill was being deposed on the browser jihad thing? No religious overtones there.
I'll leave Chaz to comment on the OS/2 history if he wishes, the dates in the article seem a little off but the IBM/Microsoft game was so drawn out, they might be right.
Cheers, Dan. |
