4. Third parties make lots of money.
4) thirdparty companies don't want invest money into eCS market.
Step One: Mensys should publish long-term plan again.
I believe you mistake where third parties make the most money off an operating system. It is in
support, as IBM can attest to for their early to mid 2000's period when they were focusing more and more on Windows support alongside their server support offerings. BILLIONS of dollars. Upgrades are another big area for third party companies.
Neither area has ever really been a money maker for OS/2 (nor will it be for eCS). Here's an example for each:
(1) Windows machines ALWAYS need support. LOTS AND LOTS of support thanks to Microsoft's shoddy code. In 1997, myself, for one of IBM's Global Services Division teams, was going for the support contract for RIGGS Bank/Bank of America. *I* was supposed to support roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of the eastern seaboard of the US. Nowadays, that takes TEAMS of people for their current Windows infrastructure. Which do you think those third party support companies would prefer? TONS of money supporting Windows installations, or a lot LESS money and a small handful of people supporting the previous OS/2 installs? Money wins of course.
(2) When I installed OS/2 Warp v4 Merlin, it had set requirements. When I installed the 15th Fixpack, it still had set requirements. When I installed Warp Server v4 Advanced, it had set requirements. When I upgraded to WSeB, its requirements were barely larger than the minimum for WS4 - and since I used the machine as a server, I was far from minimum - thus, WSeB needed NO hardware upgrades. When I installed eCS v2.1 recently, the same hardware that was running Warp 4 or WSeB was used - again no upgrades.
When people bought Windows XP machines back in 2001, it needed
***128MB*** of RAM to run. Now, it
CRAWLS on 1GB, and needs at least 2GB to run decently - all because each new kludge service pack and update makes the system slower and slower - and requires more resources to accomplish virtually the same thing.
This is another area where OS/2 and eCS cannot compete - and after the Win95 fiasco and the idiotic deceitful crap the Win95 Team VP told us at CompUSA during our nationwide video teleconference with them, I suspect Microsoft's actions in this regard are at least part intentional. So, what should we do? Artificially make updates require buying more hardware upgrades? If not, then, alas, there's a MASSIVE third party set of companies that see little need to support OS/2.
That only leaves software - but the starting points for that are covered in points #1-3 above. Until those are addressed, discussing it in relation to point #4 is useless.