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Too many cases of "OS/2 is dead, dying, etc"

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Mark Szkolnicki:
Heh Guys!


--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on March 18, 2024, 08:40:21 pm ---Hello

Let's expect the next dead for "April 15th, 2024" when Hobbes NMSU gets disconnected.  ;D ;D ;D

Regards

--- End quote ---

Been using OS/2 since 2.0 then on to 2.1, 2.11 into Warp 3, then Warp 4, including fixpacks, all versions, then the eComstation versions, through to ArcaOS 5.0 - 5.1 - OS/2 was declared "Dead", as Martin points out since 1996, when IBM really did not want to develop for "Personal OS's" anymore, ceding that back to Microsoft and Windows, wanting to get back into solely the server / mainframe software business (Lew Gerstner was somewhat adverse to enthusiasts running "Doom" on what he considered a corporate business based Operating System),

People like Brad Wardell at Stardock jumped in to create remarkable pieces of software like Object Desktop and the first Version of Galactic Civilizations at the time, solely for OS/2, but with Gerstners business decision to get out, it was really IBM who first declared OS/2 dead, by stopping development, and developers like Brad had no choice but to move on (As an aside I still use Object Desktop on ArcaOS, and it still functions perfectly after all these incarnations of a "dead" operating system).

Twenty eight years after 1996, I still run most of my business, personal software and games on it (including virtual machines for DOS and Windows), on a full network with towers, portables and peripherials, including a wide variety of legacy systems and equipment on it, when people need something from the past (yes, there still are people who want to transfer data from 360K and 1.2 M floppies).

People, the word "Dead" has morphed technically to mean "depreciated" or "not supported as per intent", with corporate management placing big money and thousands of developers into creating a new version that the mainstream "must" move to every year or so, because they do not want to learn how to technically do things for themselves - with cloud computing and Smartphones, they substitute paying again and again to stay up to date, pushed by the companies they subscribe to, for many products that they never use to their full potential anyway - but it creates the constant revenue stream that a corporation craves - I remember reading an article many years ago, where someone in IBM management acknowledging they screwed up with the IBM PC, because once someone with the technical knowledge has the technology and knowledge on their desktops, standalone, and can maintain it themselves, they don't need to constantly go back to the parent corporation to pay and pay again .............

Personally, I don't need the latest and greatest every few months, and I don't need my data to live in the clouds for a fee. Strangely enough, when I turn on my systems and networks everyday, some of the youngest ones 5-10 years old, they still function perfectly, and if not, I fix them - haven't build a latest and greatest system in a while, but still ticking along on the successors to an operating system declared "dead" long ago ...........

I don't see any of our small talented group who continue to produce remarkable results caring about the word "dead", technology wise - I remember my dad saying no one is ever dead, if there are people who remember them.

For the newbies here, welcome - as for the rest of us, I don't think you'll find many, if any, of the usual suspects lurking here much interested in reading tombstones - we're to busy trying to do what we feel is important, even if its only to us.

Best of the Rest of the Week to you!

Mark

Mark Szkolnicki

Greg Pringle:

--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on January 16, 2024, 02:24:45 am ---Hello JT

- 1st: On 1996 when the rumor came out that IBM's Gerstner said it will not longer invest in OS/2.

--- End quote ---

I knew an IBM Exec in 1994 that told me then that IBM had agreed to demands from Microsoft to not market to home users any more. It took a while for the heads of the divisions to follow this new direction. I was told the reason for this change was that IBM was getting a preferred price on Windows 3.1 for resale on IBM machines which was going to be pulled by Microsoft if OS/2 was marketed to regular users. The PC division of IBM was making a lot of money then and did not want OS/2 so Gerstner decided on the new direction. At that time the divisions of IBM were separately managed and where separate profit centers. OS/2 was a money losing profit center at that time. Later I talked with Gerstner and he was happy with the change.

Eugene Tucker:
I have heard that OS/2 is dead ever since I started using it when 2.0 first came out and I started using it in the early 90's. One thing about the "so called pundits" is that they are almost always wrong.

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