5 ms·

> Support everything into eternity 'Eternity' overstates it. Plenty of vendors support projects long after they are obsolete. IBM supported OS/2, released 1992

> Support everything into eternity 'Eternity' overstates it. Plenty of vendors support projects long after they are obsolete. IBM supported OS/2, released 1992 and a marketplace flop, until the end of 2006. That means that if I need something to be around for awhile, I'll count on IBM and not Google. Google has the perogative to make that choice, of course, and long-term support generally is associated more with the business market than with consumers. Party that's because it costs more for businesses to change, partly IMO because consumers are poorly educated customers. EDIT: It's a little odd to see this very normal comment modded down to -1 (now -3!). Another perfectly fine comment was modded down to 0. I don't care about the points at all, but it supports my instinct that some on HN are trying to protect Google. Employees? Fans?

munificent 12y ago
> IBM supported OS/2, released 1992 and a marketplace flop, until the end of 2006. That's because users paid for it. Google gave the world high-quality, free open source code hosting for eight years. I don't see how that's anything but a net positive.
jdmichal 12y ago
I think there's a huge difference between continuing support of a product and continuing support of a service. Not the least of which is that products can pick up their own life and unofficial support even after the company has abandoned them. The best you could hope to do for a service is faithfully duplicate it, with all the effort that involves.
vidarh 12y ago
And for OS/2, IBM even allowed it to live on by licensing it to a third party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EComStation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EComStation
NeutronBoy 12y ago
> 'Eternity' overstates it. Plenty of vendors support projects long after they are obsolete. IBM supported OS/2, released 1992 and a marketplace flop, until the end of 2006. I'll give you three guesses as to how much those companies still running OS/2 were paying for support in 2006.
Spooky23 12y ago
Have you ever done business with IBM? They do the exact same thing, all of the time, except that it's software so you need to deal with migration. When IBM buys a company/product, they will merrily throw everything out and declare that v.next is the next version of whatever product you are using. Then the legacy product goes in life support. OS/2 lived on because it was widely deployed in banking for ATMs and POS, and it generated a lot of complimentary revenue. So when a company like Target had 100,000 cash registers, IBM got to sell services around deployment and maintenance, and management software like Tivoli to manage the devices.

munificent 12y ago

> IBM supported OS/2, released 1992 and a marketplace flop, until the end of 2006. That's because users paid for it. Google gave the world high-quality, free open source code hosting for eight years. I don't see how that's anything but a net positive.

jdmichal 12y ago

I think there's a huge difference between continuing support of a product and continuing support of a service. Not the least of which is that products can pick up their own life and unofficial support even after the company has abandoned them. The best you could hope to do for a service is faithfully duplicate it, with all the effort that involves.

vidarh 12y ago

And for OS/2, IBM even allowed it to live on by licensing it to a third party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EComStation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EComStation

NeutronBoy 12y ago

> 'Eternity' overstates it. Plenty of vendors support projects long after they are obsolete. IBM supported OS/2, released 1992 and a marketplace flop, until the end of 2006. I'll give you three guesses as to how much those companies still running OS/2 were paying for support in 2006.

Spooky23 12y ago

Have you ever done business with IBM? They do the exact same thing, all of the time, except that it's software so you need to deal with migration. When IBM buys a company/product, they will merrily throw everything out and declare that v.next is the next version of whatever product you are using. Then the legacy product goes in life support. OS/2 lived on because it was widely deployed in banking for ATMs and POS, and it generated a lot of complimentary revenue. So when a company like Target had 100,000 cash registers, IBM got to sell services around deployment and maintenance, and management software like Tivoli to manage the devices.