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

[JTA]

The most recent article pointed at on these forums (was it Informer?), was typical. In the same article describing how OS/2 is dead, they mentioned ArcaOS, which to me implies OS/2 is anything but dead ... it is still very actively developed and very useful! But, they write the article as if OS/2 were dead anyway.

Hackaday was a tad bit better ... they had this: "The Hobbes OS/2 Archive is a large collection of OS/2 software that has been publicly available for many years, even as OS/2 itself has mostly faded into obscurity." It hasn't faded, it has exploded, but who knows this?

In fact, there is a naming/association problem ... many know the term OS/2, and not as many know the term ArcaOS. So that's an issue ... if OS/2 is considered dead, mentioning ArcaOS in the same article doesn't do anything to resurrect OS/2, and perhaps, ArcaOS is also being considered dead, by association. That is a huge problem.

32-bit OS's are very much alive, and still in use. Millions use 32-bit versions of Windows (XP or older, thru to 8.x) ... they aren't going away, and probably won't switch to anything else until forced to (their hardware dies, and the replacement has Windows 10 or later on it).

Many dozens more use 32-bit versions of Linux distros, or RPi OS's, or whatever ... obviously, I don't know what these numbers are, but I'd guess they are up in the 10's of 1000's, and possibly 100's of 1000's (if not millions).

And of course, many billions use ArcaOS, which is 32-bit ... actually, I don't know what these published numbers are either (anyone?), but if I don't, I'd imagine many others don't either, and the message isn't getting out there to everyone else. At Warpstock '23, I think I overheard that, commercially, many 1000's or 10's of 1000's of copies are in use. What are the official numbers?

So, where's the beef (the articles)? There's some writing to be done ...

1. How do we refute the constant drone of OS/2 is dead, when it is very much alive? Write more articles, ourselves, and figure out how to get them published. Did ArcaOS ever sort out "tech evangelists", as these have an important role as well?

2. What forums, online magazines, and more do we need to target (blanket) with articles showing what we can do with ArcaOS right now? Get the list of such, and determine their "publishing rules" (many of which might block OS/2?). Have to figure out who to send the articles to, what objections that need overcoming, etc.

3. Boilerplate some articles? I can produce a boilerplate article in about 5 seconds; writing content is easy ... cleaning it up, peer review, and revising it is what takes time.

4. ArcaOS - Thrusters on Full (AToF)? All my articles on this are in the Virtualization folder, so they just need reworking into "article-length format". These basically take away any argument that OS/2 can't be used, because of this (only 32-bit), that (no 64-bit app access), or the other (old stuff, when many active ports from the Linux world are everywhere).

... and so on. Need lots of feedback here ...

[Martin Iturbide]

Hello JT

Just as a funny note, in some presentation (I don't remember which Warpstock), I listed how many times OS/2 has died:

- 1st: On 1996 when the rumor came out that IBM's Gerstner said it will not longer invest in OS/2.
- 2nd : On 1999 when Warp Server for e-business was released only as a server, everybody said OS/2 was dead.
- 3rd: On 2005  (July), when IBM announced the "Withdrawal from Marketing" and "End of Support" dates of OS/2.
- 4th: On 2005 (December), when the "Withdrawal from Marketing" date was reached.
- 5th: On 2006, when the "End of Support" was reached.
- 6th: When Serenity System dissapeared, and it was transfer to Mensys.
- 7th: On 2013, when Mensys sold eComStation to XEU.
- 8th: On 2014, when we didn't get any eComStation updates from XEU.
- 9th: On 2024, when Hobbes is getting discontinued.

...and I'm sure many others happened too (Maybe when IBM rejected our letter to open source OS/2 (2006?)).

Every little negative news about OS/2 is an opportunity for the press to say "Now it is really, really dead".

Regards

[JTA]

Sent a "tip" (ArcaOS article) in to Hackaday.com a day or so ago, via the site's submittal form:

  hackaday.com/submit-a-tip/

No idea if it'll get published or not, but others are welcome to try as well. If anything shows up at their main page, we'll know that this site "accepts" ArcaOS (OS/2) articles, vs dropping the submittals for whatever reason, as in, they may not want to publish anything but "OS/2 is dead" types of articles.

[Mathias]

Whenever I read an article about "OS/2 is dead", I remember a Saturday night show in DE television, where they announced the death of Karl Ranseier (fictional character) each Saturday as a running gag. --> [Google translated article]

As long as there are articles about "OS/2 is dead", it's not really dead, as people still remember. : )
OS/2 is dead when the majority asks: "What.... is dead???"

Mathias

[Martin Iturbide]

Hello

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

Regards

[Mark Szkolnicki]

Heh Guys!

Hello

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

Regards

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]

Hello JT

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

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.