Java extends the lifetime of OS/2
OS/2 is alive. OS/2 is not to be discontinued. That's the massage from IBM, when
they tries to refute rumours and calm down worried customers. OS/2 is actually lucrative.
It started out with an internal memo of 12 pages which slipped out to Internet.
During a few days it was possible to read, on a website for OS/2-users, that IBM
is continuing cutting down further OS/2 development and 'customers in due time have
to change platform or accept lessened functionality if they continue to use OS/2'.
Senior OS/2-boss Jeff Smith had to use all of his authority to get the troublesome
document off the web, but by then it already had been picked up by the american
business magazine Smart Reseller, and got a new circulation.
Note: A summary of the document was available on this site for just over
1 day. The actual document was posted for only a few hours. As for Jeff Smith, once
he asked it to be removed I did, hardly the adventure this portrays. -- Loren
Ten days later Jeff Smith comes to Stockholm on a turn-out.
- It was a half-finished internal letter with a lot of faults and the part on
changing platform was especially wrong, he assures Computer
Sweden, when he got a cigarette and a cup of coffee after showing over-head
pictures before journalists and a representative from the Swedish
OS/2 User Group.
- It's like this, he says, my biggest item of expenditure is updating OS/2 drivers,
we haven't stopped maintaining the system. We see no furthest time limit for it's
lifetime. However, we don't plan to do as Microsoft do, trying to get one and the
same operating system to manage everything. OS/2 will not grow upwards. If our customers
need bigger systems we have AIX and OS400, he says.
He points at one of his over-head pictures, or foils as IBM says, and repeat
what it states:
- The 1,500 biggest OS/2 customers stand for 40 percent of the IBM total turnover!
Should we afford getting them into the jam? he asks.
In the unfortunate document, Java is portrayed as the only weapon against Microsoft
dominance. And on that Jeff Smith agrees:
- We shall have Java everywhere. Our goal is that at least every second new application
are built with Java within four years. OS/2 is the perfect server operating system
for thin clients, all of them running Java applications. We are coming up both with
thin, Intel based clients and the system addition WorkSpace on Demand, he told us.
The latter is expanding OS/2 so the clients will be started directly from the
server. It will offer features to administrate both thin and fat clients from the
server.
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