Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!ur-tut!pmjc
From: pmjc@ur-tut (Pam Arnold)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Why clone the PS/2?
Keywords: PS/2 clone
Message-ID: <2066@ur-tut.UUCP>
Date: 16 May 88 03:40:19 GMT
References: <8685@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU> <5823@well.UUCP> <10600@steinmetz.ge.com> <5836@well.UUCP> <1252@uokmax.UUCP> <5884@well.UUCP> <5167@cup.portal.com> <488@bnlux0.bnl.gov> <1642@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: pmjc@tut.cc.rochester.edu.UUCP (Pam Arnold)
Organization: Univ. of Rochester Computing Center
Lines: 23

In article <1642@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>What I want to know is, why the big excitement about cloning the PS/2?
>Why all the rush?
>-- 

People who are in the business of selling hardware or software have to worry
about fads and buzzwords as much or more than the actual technical merit
of their products. For example, in software, it will probably be important
pretty soon to have an OS/2 version of your program(s), even if most of
your customers don't run OS/2 now, and many of them may not for many moons,
including the ones who are hassling you about an OS/2 version. The reason
is that they have gotten it into their heads that OS/2 is important, and
that your software must be rejected if it hasn't fallen in line with this
important new trend.

Same sort of thing with hardware. Even people who haven't bought PS/2's
will want to see support for the PS/2 standard, because they've become
convinced that this standard is or will be important. It is also a way
they have of judging how technically aggressive your company is (although
how cloning someone else's design can be considered 'aggressive' is
certainly problematic).

>Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473