Five years ago, there were still headlines about Novell NetWare. Most people probably imagine that NetWare became history long before that, but the operating system was still clinging onto life in 2003 despite being mortally wounded by Windows NT Server.
One particular headline related to Surrey Council, which bravely threw out its Windows NT servers and went for nostalgia. “We decided to standardise on Novell because we had a better in-house skills base for Novell,” said the council’s IT chief.
Then last week another ghost of operating systems past made the news, with the launch of a petition to open-source IBM’s OS/2. This prompted a call from enthusiastic journalist asking for a quote from me in my capacity as a founder member of the OS/2 User Group.
It may surprise you to know, but there really is an OS/2 User Group. Indeed, it wasn’t that long ago that I was sitting in my bank manager’s office and happened to spot the distinctive OS/2 “waiting” icon on his PC screen. “Are you IBM users?” I asked. “No, we have MS OS/2, not OS/2 Warp, but we’re phasing it out,” he said.
The truth is I am not, nor never have been, a member of the OS/2 User Group. However, I am a founding member of the OS/2 Drinking Club, which unlike its namesake is still going strong.
