Hamilton Group Announcement

[H. Lynn Tilley]

>
>Both told me that they are either changing direction or revisiting 
>policy due to this action!  
>
	I was kind of suprised to be asked about OSF by a vendor 
	today myself.  Their response seemed to be very much like
	Microsoft's in that, if it becomes a standard, they will support
	it. They are clearly staying out of the fight and watching
	what happens.
>
>The end user community will read this nonsense and
>immediately head for the safe, steady familiar shores of IBM OS/2.  That
>is the intention here.  Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to wake up to
>IBM's marketing ploy.
>

	Lets not get carried away here.  I don't think that you can
	lay this entirely at IBM's doorstep.  Digital and HP obviously
	played a large part in it also.  One of the things that I 
	heard was that AT&T was asked to join and DONATE Unix sysVr3.
	When AT&T turned the offer down (something to do with Dec 
	being unwilling to put VMS into the pot -- again something 
	that I heard in passing) everyone in the group licensed
	AIX from IBM.  

	It seems alittle ironic that the companies that have the most
	to loose from the arrival at a standard operating system are the
	ones that are forming this group.  I agree with you in that this
	seems largely to be a marketing ploy.  The thing that I can't 
	figure out is why Digital, HP and Apollo would agree to work the
	kinks out of AIX for IBM and on top of that, fund the operation. 

	I don't think that people are going to flock too Microsoft's OS/2 
	though.  It requires too much hardware and has far to little 
	software to attract people.  The thing that propelled DOS (and
	still does for that matter) is applications software.  I would
	hate to have to buy the extended/enhanced whiz-bang version of 
	OS/2 at $800/copy (I think this is right, might be more) and 
	find out that due to lack of applications, etc. that I could 
	have gotten by with an $89 version of DOS.

-- 
 |   Henry L. Tilley             Center for Robotics and Manufacturing Systems
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