🚀 go-pugleaf

stewarta@netcom.com (Alex Stewart) wrote:
>OK, here's the situation as I understand it:  Bob talked to some guy in DAP who
>told him he could get the source code.  Based on this he quit his job and
>invested $100,000 in his project.  Evetually he found out from somebody else
>that IBM _could_not_ legally provide the source code, because Microsoft
>wouldn't let them.  And now he's mad at IBM?
>
>Bob made a (very serious) mistake, the DAP guy (either deliberately or
>accidentally) was wrong, Microsoft is just being generally scummy towards OS/2,
>but I can see no fault here in either IBM or their DAP (it was mentioned that
>the employee in question was no longer with IBM.  Whether voluntarily or not,
>we'll probably never know, but I wouldn't be surprised at the latter).
>
>All in all, this whole thing was quite unfortunate all round, but blaming IBM
>for all of it seems to me to be both completely pointless and wrong.

While I agree with you partially here, I think you're missing the
point a bit.  If IBM were serious about developer support, which they
MUST be if OS/2 is to be of any consequence, it is crucial that they
simply don't allow this type of thing to happen.

Perhaps Bob made a mistake in putting so much on the line, but
consider his position when he made the request.  He joined the DAP,
told IBM his intentions and asked for the driver source.  What
possible reason would he have for thinking that something as trivial
and standard as sample source code would be a problem?  Development
kits of these sorts always come with sample source.  That's almost a
given.

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