Microsoft abandoned their OS/2 customers

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POS Strategies & Plans - Boco Raton 01-Feb-95 10:30 Page 2 of 2

Further Descriptions of Future Strategies for Windows 95 Support

Current Environment

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For the customer it is critical that they have applications that will run "out of the box" on OS/2 Warp. Therefore since we believe IBM should not support native Windows 95 applications, we must further fund programs to significantly increase the number of native OS/2 applications

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4. Propagate an IBM marketing spin on the issue to dampen the preconceived sucess perception of Windows 95 exploitative applications.

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Microsoft still has not proven they can be successful at creating strong customer demand for a high volume 32-bit API. Windpows 95 is Microsoft's fourth attempt to do so:


 * First with OS/2 when we were partners, but Microsoft abandoned their OS/2 customers and developers prior to us making OS/2 successful;


 * Then with Windows NT which has not achieved critical mass volume;


 * Then with Win32s, mentioned previously, which has not been widely accepted; and


 * Now with Win32s, which has not shipped, has been delayed many times, is not proven, and has zero exploitative applications shipping.

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Current environment

The strategy of continually updating the OS/2 technology necessary to run applications based on new Windows APIs perpetuates a "follow me" posture for OS/2 .. Even many of the current OS/2-native applications are actually direct ports of Windows applications that do not exploit some of the most demonstrable features of OS/2 such as multithreading or Workplace Shell integration.

Even if IBM was to continue this strategy for Windows 95, the earliest we could make the updated technology available to our customers would be nine to twelve months after Windows 95 ships. Furthermore, this will not address Windows 96,97 etc, the API extensions to Win32C (eg., OLE), nor the possible artificial technical hurdles, Microsoft can introduce to make implementation of the technology more difficult for IBM.

Full Exhibit
http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/px02233.pdf