[fpc-other] [fpc-devel] OS/2 and DLLs

[Ralf Quint]

On 12/18/2014 2:09 PM, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> I presume that the early enthusiasm had largely dissipated by the time 
> IBM started pushing it as a 32-bit OS, with a new binary format etc.
>
OS/2 is 32bit (for the most part) since v2.0, released in 1992 and it 
became actually really popular after that with OS/2 3.x and 4.x 
("Warp"), so I doubt that this is a valid conclusion.

It's rather that IBM started to position it for it's own specialized 
markets rather then "fight" against Microsoft Windows as a mainstream 
desktop OS, not to mention trying to compete with OS/2 LAN Server 
against the surging Windows Server products (specifically after Windows 
2000 Server was released). That made it a less lucrative and attractive 
market for people in the mainstream market. I can remember to have seen 
OS/2 based bank terminals here in the US just a year or so ago.
A lot of that had to do with the mindset of IBM as a whole, still to 
this day far too focused on "the big iron" (and now cloud) stuff and 
never have taken the PC market that serious. That's also why they first 
offloaded the ThinkPad stuff to the actual manufacturer Lenovo years 
ago, followed by the PC and now recently, the x86 based server parts...

Ralf


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