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On 8 Apr 1995 Jim_Moody@pcworld.com wrote:

>          Well, it seems as if NCN learned SOMEthing from watching us
>          computer geeks.  Freezing the market and paralyzing the
>          opposition with a premature, or at least an optimistic
>          announcement of a new product or service is a time-worn and
This may be what NCN is ATTEMPTING to do, but they are messing with a 
very different environment.  Now that there is some real money to be 
made, they want to create some sort of exclusive, proprietary product.  
The problem is that they are trying to do this in the very environment 
that dethroned IBM and DEC proprietary systems first from the 
minicomputer market and then from the Mainframe market.  This is the 
hotbed of "Open Systems Standards".  This is the WRONG place to try and 
piss off about 25,000 engineers.

>          honoured tradition in the ComputerWorld.  Certainly Microsoft
>          is a master at this ploy (tell me AGAIN when Windows 95 is
>          going to ship???? I keep forgetting).  And when I was at
It's shipping, as unsupported software.  Of course, Linux is selling more 
copies then Microsoft can give Windows-95 away.  There isn't a lot of 
profit left in operating systems and infrastructure.  Dr. Dobbs' April 
issue provides insight into Microsoft's new relationship toward Unix in 
general.  Microsoft will be providing MFCs for most flavors of Unix 
(possibly including Linux).

The Linux developers on the WinE project are so close to solid Windows 
emulation, that it's only a matter of time before "Windows95" just 
becomes 32bit code that runs under Unix.

Notice Ray Noorda is putting guns behind unix too. (chimera.com).

>          Borland, though we used to snipe at Microsoft for vaporware
>          announcements, Borland did its share too.  Old cynics in this
>          industry never believe any announcement until they see the
>          shipping product, and sometimes not even then.

As an old Unix hacker, I have always been amused by the "Press Releases" 
of most of the "Major Industry Leaders".  By the time IBM supported EDX 
on the SERIES 1, Unix (2.4 BSD) was running on PDP-11s (Which killed the 
series 1 market).  By the time DEC announced the Vax 8600 running 8 Mips,
Computer Consoles was shipping 16 Mips "Tahoes" to Sperry and Harris 
which ran UNIX.  By the time IBM announced that the ES-9000 would support 
ASCII and TCP/IP, Hitachi was offering a machine that was twice as fast 
and supported full UNIX and a SQL server.

By the time Microsoft announced a 32 bit operating system with window 
interface, SCO offered more features and required less memory and less 
disk-drive.  By the time they announced Windows-95, Linux had 
sold/downloaded 1 million copies.  Microsoft actually had to give away 
copies of Windows-NT to claim that they had shipped 1 million copies, 1 
year later than promised.

These days, when I hear a "VaporWare" announcment, I know they are 
reacting to a product that has not only been available on UNIX for a 
period of time, but ALSO has established a market lead.

What UNIX needs is a few good "Spin Doctors". :-).

>          Jim
	Rex Ballard (S&P)
	disclaimers


From rballard@cnj.digex.net Mon May  1 04:20:11 1995