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And IIRC, he had IBM invest in Linux around 1999. That paved the way for eventual acquisition of Red Hat (for good or bad) :)
by jmclnx 10mo ago
And IIRC, he had IBM invest in Linux around 1999. That paved the way for eventual acquisition of Red Hat (for good or bad) :)
- jonathaneunice 10mo agoIt paved the way for a lot more than that. At a time open source in general, and Linux in particular, did not have much corporate buy-in, IBM signaled "we back this" and "we're investing in this" in substantial ways that corporate IT executives could hear and act upon. That was a pre-cloud, pre-hyperscaler era when "enterprise IT" was the generally understood "high end" of the market, and IBM ruled that arena. IBM backing Linux and open source paved the way for a large swath of the industry—customers, software vendors, channel/distribution partners, yadda yadda—to do likewise.
- mistrial9 10mo agoagree - and the big industry consortium building `gcc` was already proving itself
- rilindo 10mo agoI got complicated feelings about that. He did help pave the way for Linux, but he also killed OS/2.
- raw_anon_1111 10mo agoOS/2 never had a chance. I was working at Radio Shack at the time that IBM was trying to sell Aptivas with OS/2. No one wanted it. It was just weird to people. Microsoft did a big consumer push for Windows 95 and there were lines to buy it and Bill Gates promoted it on the Jay Leno show. Windows 95 almost killed Apple.
- tonyedgecombe 10mo agoIt was never really suited to retail sales channels like Radio Shack. It was more of a corporate thing although it obviously failed there as well. I only came across it at one site, a big UK bank (Midland Bank). They were using a heavily modified version, it didn’t look anything like the original product.
- II2II 10mo agoThere were plenty of people who wanted OS/2. They simply weren't the type of people who would go to Radio Shack. By plenty, I should be clear: it probably wasn't enough for OS/2 survive. IBM made some bad decisions early on. Microsoft was also a thorn in everyone's side and it looked like. While their product was good enough, their business practices were savage. Possibly something they learned from IBM's legacy. I was in my late teens/early twenties at the time. What I learned about how major corporations at the time is likely what led to my llife long interest in open source.
- bruce511 10mo agoMicrosoft spent a billion 1995 dollars marketing Win 95. Plus they had existing DOS and Windows 3.x users. Arguably OS/2 was "better" (depending on your definition) but MS were all-in on Windows, and for IBM OS/2 was a side-line. It never stood a chance.
- georgeecollins 10mo agoDouglas Copeland wrote a fictional book called Microserfs. He did a lot of comparison between the culture of IBM and Microsoft. Not a bad book , I recall. as
- zabzonk 10mo agoOS/2 had some of the ugliest icons I've ever seen (and that elephant!) - looking cute always wins.
- silon42 10mo agoYeah, I remember switching from OS/2 to Linux when OS/2 was more or less abandoned.