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The OS/2 Debate- by Chris Wenham & Colin Hildinger
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IBM is the company we all love to hate. On the one hand, they have provided us with what is probably the best operating system in the world. On the other, many feel they have hobbled that operating system with inept marketing and strategic blunders. Some feel so strongly that IBM has harmed OS/2's chances to succeed on its own merits that they loudly argue it's time to cut the strings and sell or give OS/2 to some third party.

To get to the bottom of this issue, this month, OS/2 e-Zine! editors, Chris Wenham and Colin L. Hildinger debate the question, "What should IBM do with OS/2?"

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Chris: At the very least, IBM needs to license OS/2's code to a third party, if not outright sell the client version.

IBM wants to sell OS/2 to medium and large businesses, not us. As a result home and small business customers feel left out of the action and all the best technologies being developed for OS/2 are not useful to us (e.g.: Workspace on Demand). Selling OS/2 to a vendor committed to this "SOHO" market, or even to a consortium of vendors, and the continued grassroots efforts of users already in full swing (such as Warpstock and VOICE) will give OS/2 enough "oomph" to survive in this market. Possibly even enough to have moderate success as an alternative platform for people who can't find what they need in Windows 95 and the Mac.

Colin: While I agree that this sounds like a great idea, I don't think it's at all reasonable. Why? The simple answer is: $$$.

Operating systems don't make money, so this third party would have to have some other reason to take on such a venture, and quite frankly, no one would have the motivation or the resources to do it except IBM.

Ideally this company would be responsible for packaging, distributing, advertising and supporting OS/2 end users. In order to sell a significant number of copies they'd have to significantly lower the price (a visit to CompUSA last month showed that Warp 4 was about $20 more expensive than even Windows NT 4.0, and about 3 times more expensive than Windows 95) and they'd never be able to handle the massive support, development and advertising costs required to succeed without other revenue sources.

Chris: A small start-up called Be seems to think they can get away with it, somehow. I'm not privy to their business plan but I don't think they would be spending an enormous amount of money developing a new OS from scratch if they didn't think they could make back their investment later. Now, a company taking over the client version of OS/2 would have it much, much, easier than Be, precisely because they'd be getting an operating system that's already fully developed, time-tested and installed on a number of 'seats'.

How could they make money? An operating system is a great 'foot in the door' for selling complementary products and services. Create a turnkey package that wires a small business together and "just plain works". Create a bundle of software that covers all the bases a home user would need (finance, word processing, Internet, games) and package it and the OS together with a "one click" install program. Do the same thing, but with software targeted for small businesses and home offices. But make sure there's plenty of good strong products in the bundle, not just weak ones or "lite" versions. This scheme worked for bundling sound cards with CD-ROMs and speakers, it could work for OS/2.

Colin: The key to the whole scenario is money. IBM has no reason to give up a product that is making money to another entity. There are no other entities with the money to effectively maintain and develop OS/2, much, less market it. As for Be, I don't know what they're doing. Obviously, they either have a very good source of financing or there are a bunch of starving programmers and engineers developing BeOS and the BeBox.

Chris: The unspoken assumption we've had so far is that, if sold, OS/2 would only go to a small company, not much, bigger than Stardock or Be. Well, that doesn't have to be the case. There are companies out there with the money to buy or license OS/2 who would make money from it, at least indirectly.

Intel could take OS/2 off IBM's hands and in one move quickly solve a number of their problems. With it they can put features and performance into OS/2 that only a chipmaker could manage, making Windows look miserable in comparison without even having to deliberately "break" it. With their own OS, which Intel could make the 'standard' in little more than a year, there won't be any more embarrassments like the Pentium Pro -- a 32-bit optimized chip which performed so dismally under the half-n-half Windows 95.

Or perhaps Motorola, another chip maker who could quickly revive and polish up the PowerPC version of OS/2, ready to have something to sell should Apple bite the big one and take with it the remaining market for PowerPC chips. Besides, what are they going to do now that they can't sell Macintosh clones anymore?

And in either case, IBM doesn't have to give up the OS/2 they're selling to banks. Microsoft didn't give up Windows NT when they licensed the source code to Citrix for their WinFrame technology...

Colin: I think you're missing my point. Intel has no real reason to care about OS/2. Sure, Windows 95's dismal 32-bit performance caused them a setback with the Pentium Pro chips, but I'd be willing to bet that they're quite happy with the sales of their chips and the profits they're making. Selling more copies of OS/2 wouldn't increase the number of chips they'd sell, it would only increase the number of those CPU's which would run OS/2.

OS/2 PPC is incomplete at best. Right now Motorola is probably a little uneasy, but don't look for them to care about OS/2. If Motorola were considering something like you describe, I would look for them to do it with Apple (with Rhapsody, not MacOS) or with Be.

Simply put, the benefits you see from licensing OS/2 are nowhere near the negatives. The best option is for IBM to get its act together. IBM is the only company which can recognize the benefits of spending hundreds of millions a year on OS/2 and it just happens to be the company which currently owns and markets (OK, so this is debatable) it. No one else has any reason to care, except of course OS/2 users.

Chris: This is pretty much, why I think OS/2 should be set free. I'd love IBM to do just as you say -- oh boy, I'd think we were invincible then -- but I'm not convinced they'll do this and I'm tired of waiting to be proved wrong.

Colin: I think that most people who want to see IBM sell/license/spin off OS/2 want this because they're frustrated with not seeing IBM do things right. The problem, and the thing people forget, is that no one else has a good reason to, "do things right." Only IBM has good reasons to care.

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Want to join in our debate? Send us your suggestions and opinions, and stay tuned to future issues of OS/2 e-Zine! for more debates on issues close to OS/2 users hearts.

Chris Wenham is a freelance web designer, writer and Englishman who now lives in Endicott, NY. In the past he has written comedy, sci-fi, Pascal, Rexx, HTML and Gibberish. He has been using OS/2 exclusively for the past 2 years.

Colin Hildinger is an Aerospace Engineering senior at Oklahoma State University and has been using OS/2 for the last 3 years. In addition to being the Games Editor for OS/2 e-Zine!, he maintains The Ultimate OS/2 Gaming Page and the AWE32 and OS/2 Page in his "spare" time.


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