4 ms·

John W. Thompson was once general manager of the division of IBM that produced OS/2[1], which was soundly defeated by Microsoft. I wonder how he feels about bei

John W. Thompson was once general manager of the division of IBM that produced OS/2[1], which was soundly defeated by Microsoft. I wonder how he feels about being chairman of Microsoft now given that previous experience. [1] Around this time, he reported to an executive named John M. Thompson, hence the use of middle initials.

moron4hire 13y ago
He is probably a professional who understands how business works and doesn't think anything about it.
- ebbv 13y ago
  It's all well and good to recognize that he clearly hasn't let his personal feelings about his past project's destruction hinder his career. That's an admirable quality in him and worth noting. It's another thing to pretend he's a robot and has no feelings on the matter, which is what you're implying. I think the original question is a valid one. Clearly he would have thoughts on the matter and they may be interesting to hear.
  - moron4hire 13y ago
    Or perhaps it's not as big of a deal to him now as it is to you.
rbanffy 13y ago
Another way you can read it is with a comparison with Stephen Elop and Rick Belluzzo. Could he have intentionally mis-managed OS/2 leaving the space open for Windows 3, being then rewarded by a position at Microsoft's board? I know nothing about his career or his decisions WRT the OS/2 product, but, after having a closer look at the other two, a pattern of executive placement as an offensive weapon starts to form. edit: minor clarifications
- shadowfox 13y ago
  > I know nothing about his career, but, after having a closer look at the other two, a pattern of executive placement as an offensive weapon starts to form. Good Lord, that is some serious speculation :)
  - npmanag 13y ago
    Reading your parent poster's HN about page will show the reason.
- hga 13y ago
  A critical historical factor that doomed OS/2 from the outside was that following IBM tradition, after the evolution of PC -> XT -> AT, they told IT managers the PC-AT would be the last microcomputer they'd have to buy for a long time. Unfortunately, per Bill Gates, its 286 was "brain dead chip" and absolutely hopeless and slow in Protected Mode, which is where it needed to run for a modern, large address space computer. As I understand it, the OS/2 inability to abandon the 286/PC-AT for the 386 is what really drove the split. (It wasn't even IBM that came out with the first major 386 system, but Compaq.)
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    The 286 really had a lot of technical issues and IBM's apparent reluctance to embrace the 386 did hurt them in the long run (as well as MCA). Yet, for software built for OS/2, the 286 was just fine. Its main problem was dealing with DOS programs that wanted direct access to hardware. The fact that developing for OS/2 was painful and expensive was not helping. IBM made a lot of stupid decisions and Microsoft benefited greatly from those decisions.
    - hga 13y ago
      Really? What I was told by various people who tried this is that Intel had no idea how people actually coded for the x86/weren't willing to make segment sizes larger than the original 64 KiB, and the penalty for loading a new segment register was "tens of cycles" per Wikipedia, I've heard on the order of 40 earlier. So a lot of existing code bases, including a couple I worked on for PCs (Gosling Emacs and a write once filesystem) ran, or would run, fantastically slower in Protected Mode. Yeah, sure, you could with no small amount of pain write more efficient code for OS/2 1.x, but why bother after Windows 3.x became a big hit? Oh, yeah, now you're reminding me that the cost to develop for it was $6K for the SDK in 2013 dollars, plus of course a PC-AT with a lot of memory (at least 1.5 MiB, which wasn't cheap back then, nor was the AT).
yuhong 13y ago
Well, what I called the "MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco" is one of my favorite topics, and as I said before I have a bad opinion against MS about it. Notice it was Paul Maritz who wrote http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/0000/PX00307.pdf http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/... BTW.

moron4hire 13y ago

He is probably a professional who understands how business works and doesn't think anything about it.

ebbv 13y ago
It's all well and good to recognize that he clearly hasn't let his personal feelings about his past project's destruction hinder his career. That's an admirable quality in him and worth noting. It's another thing to pretend he's a robot and has no feelings on the matter, which is what you're implying. I think the original question is a valid one. Clearly he would have thoughts on the matter and they may be interesting to hear.
- moron4hire 13y ago
  Or perhaps it's not as big of a deal to him now as it is to you.

rbanffy 13y ago

Another way you can read it is with a comparison with Stephen Elop and Rick Belluzzo. Could he have intentionally mis-managed OS/2 leaving the space open for Windows 3, being then rewarded by a position at Microsoft's board? I know nothing about his career or his decisions WRT the OS/2 product, but, after having a closer look at the other two, a pattern of executive placement as an offensive weapon starts to form. edit: minor clarifications

shadowfox 13y ago
> I know nothing about his career, but, after having a closer look at the other two, a pattern of executive placement as an offensive weapon starts to form. Good Lord, that is some serious speculation :)
- npmanag 13y ago
  Reading your parent poster's HN about page will show the reason.
hga 13y ago
A critical historical factor that doomed OS/2 from the outside was that following IBM tradition, after the evolution of PC -> XT -> AT, they told IT managers the PC-AT would be the last microcomputer they'd have to buy for a long time. Unfortunately, per Bill Gates, its 286 was "brain dead chip" and absolutely hopeless and slow in Protected Mode, which is where it needed to run for a modern, large address space computer. As I understand it, the OS/2 inability to abandon the 286/PC-AT for the 386 is what really drove the split. (It wasn't even IBM that came out with the first major 386 system, but Compaq.)
- rbanffy 13y ago
  The 286 really had a lot of technical issues and IBM's apparent reluctance to embrace the 386 did hurt them in the long run (as well as MCA). Yet, for software built for OS/2, the 286 was just fine. Its main problem was dealing with DOS programs that wanted direct access to hardware. The fact that developing for OS/2 was painful and expensive was not helping. IBM made a lot of stupid decisions and Microsoft benefited greatly from those decisions.
  - hga 13y ago
    Really? What I was told by various people who tried this is that Intel had no idea how people actually coded for the x86/weren't willing to make segment sizes larger than the original 64 KiB, and the penalty for loading a new segment register was "tens of cycles" per Wikipedia, I've heard on the order of 40 earlier. So a lot of existing code bases, including a couple I worked on for PCs (Gosling Emacs and a write once filesystem) ran, or would run, fantastically slower in Protected Mode. Yeah, sure, you could with no small amount of pain write more efficient code for OS/2 1.x, but why bother after Windows 3.x became a big hit? Oh, yeah, now you're reminding me that the cost to develop for it was $6K for the SDK in 2013 dollars, plus of course a PC-AT with a lot of memory (at least 1.5 MiB, which wasn't cheap back then, nor was the AT).

yuhong 13y ago

Well, what I called the "MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco" is one of my favorite topics, and as I said before I have a bad opinion against MS about it. Notice it was Paul Maritz who wrote http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/0000/PX00307.pdf http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/... BTW.