Haiku: BeOS Reborn

[Derek Broughton]

Odd wrote:

> Derek Broughton wrote:
>> Odd wrote:
>> 
>>> Michael Haney wrote:
>> 
>>>> IBM just couldn't compete with
>>>> Micro$oft's marketing department
>>> Not only that, they couldn't compete with themselves. Back then, IBM
>>> was divided in several units that competed internally. This meant that
>>> IBM's own PC unit used Windows instead of OS/2. Talk about shooting
>>> themselves in the foot.
>> 
>> To be fair to IBM, that wasn't IBM's fault.  That was the US Department
>> of Justice and anti-trust legislation, back when the DoJ actually had
>> teeth and didn't just do big-businesses bidding.
> 
> That may be. But I still don't see why they couldn't use OS/2 on
> the PCs they sold. It's not like they didn't have sufficient competition
> in Windows.

They _could_ have used it - but they had to be able to justify it.  One IBM 
unit would have to pay _retail_ for the OS produced by a different unit.  
Given that MS was (and still is) encouraging everybody to install their OS 
for far less than retail, and IBM would have been in violation of court 
orders to offer a rebate to their own divisions, it was impossible for IBM 
to compete in their own shop!
-- 
derek