Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!nuchat!sugar!karl
From: karl@sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: OS/2 is the result of anticompetitive practices by IBM and Microsoft
Message-ID: <1925@sugar.UUCP>
Date: 4 May 88 02:04:37 GMT
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 52

I believe the promise of the '286 processor to provide protected mode
multitasking has not been achieved in any major way in the four years
since the AT's introduction because IBM never got behind the one available 
operating system that could support it: Unix.  An oft-cited reason why Unix
hasn't become the AT (and above) standard is that vendors balked at moving 
their applications, but that's a chicken-and-egg argument.  Since most 
vendors appear to be going to OS/2, they could have been pushed to do Unix 
(Xenix), had IBM and Microsoft decided to do so.  Systems built around the 
386 have been out for some time, their promise also has been largely 
unfulfilled for the same reasons.

The fact is, the problems with Unix could have been fixed far more easily
than writing a new operating system.  What's wrong with Unix, at least the
versions I see, is that you still, even on an AT, have to have or be a
guru to install it and keep it running.  Surely it is easier to fix this 
than writing an operating system from scratch, and judging by OS/2's 
lateness (four years, as I see it), bugginess and slowness and the fact
that current 286 and 386 protected mode multitasking multiuser versions
of Unix and Xenix can run DOS proves that it has been true in this case.
(By the way, OS/2 doesn't run in native 386 mode on the 386 - "chopped out 
two thirds of me brains.")

Although I can easily envision a shootout at Microsoft in which a bunch
of people who wanted it to be Unix got shot down by a bunch of people
who desperately wanted to "roll their own", I feel more confident that
both IBM and Microsoft saw it to their financial advantage to write
their own ($795 for OS/2 with Presentation Manager, when it comes out.
Unix is effectively a commodity market.  No way could they charge that
price indefinitely.) and even more important than that, IBM doesn't want 
their customers traipsing off to follow Sun, Apollo, Cray, Apple, Sequent,
Tandem, Control Data, DEC, Amdahl &c &c &c.  They wanted them nice and 
locked in, so they (PC users) will have to trash all the software they 
have in order to move up.  Also, multiuser is a no-no.  It won't sell 
enough computers and competes with profitable, expensive, "lock 'em in" 
minicomputers.

A fast '386 is a powerful machine.  A few years ago a lot of places would 
have hung thirty or forty users on one, or more.  The power of the '386, 
with its 32 bit architecture and on-board memory manager, places it in the 
performance class of what we are calling workstations today.  Those systems 
all run Unix.  For the standardization that would incur, and to the 
competitive benefit of our company, I hope Unix becomes the dominant 
operating system on IBM PCs and clones equipped with '286 and '386 processors.
-karl

P.S. Please no followups flaming me that a workstation is more than a
386/20.  That's totally obvious.  I already excluded that stuff anyway by 
saying "performance class" and besides, that kind of posting is just a cheap 
shot by people who want to post but don't have anything to say.
-- 
"I think Michael is like litmus paper - He's always trying to learn" - Liz
Taylor ..!{bellcore!tness1,uunet!nuchat}!sugar!karl, Unix BBS (713) 438-5018