Re: Current status of Ada?

[Colin Paul Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org>]

On 2007-08-30, anon <anon@anon.org> wrote:

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|"In <slrnfdalvv.bk.Colin_Paul_Gloster@localhost.localdomain>, Colin Paul Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org> writes:|
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|>Which companies used OS/2 much?                                                                                     |
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|[..] For others                                                                                                      |
|and to know which ones, well I suggest you go to the local Public                                                    |
|Library and check out some of the computer magazines of the 1990s.                                                   |
|All of my magazines are Archived."                                                                                   |
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I live in Europe now as I did throughout the entirety of the 1990s and
if you think public European libraries have computer magazines from
that decade then you are not very well informed about this topic. I
can tell you that a review of OS/2 Warp in a European magazine I read
(which I can easily retrieve from my own personal collection and send
you a copy of if you wish) was not very positive. Another issue of
that magazine from that decade contained coverage of OS/2 Warp which
was much more negative (and somewhat exaggerated) and was somewhat
like the following: it was a response to a letter and the response was
like this: of the hundreds of thousands of readers of this magazine,
we would receive about two complaints for criticizing OS/2 and most of
them [sic] would probably be fom employees of IBM.

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|"[..]                                                                                                                |
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|I believe there is a link at www.groklaw.net about the Microsoft and                                                 |
|European court battle, it was a couple of years ago that I saw it, so                                                |
|look in the achives! [..]"                                                                                           |
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Thank you, I might check this when I have more time.

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|"This leads one to believe that most Non-US companies will not switch to                                             |
|Vesta.                                                                                                               |
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|>Maybe not, maybe.                                                                                                   |
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|This should be a no brainer!  Keep the existing LINUX system"                                                        |
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Many companies outside of the United States of America are running
operating systems which had been created before DOS. At least one of
the banks I am a customer of, for example.

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|" which is                                                                                                           |
|easy to update"                                                                                                      |
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Running two closed source third party programs which were dynamically
linked for different GNU/Linux operating systems can be very difficult
if you need to run them in one operating system on one computer. This
problem could easily arise if one program needs to be upgraded.

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|" and update only when it is needed. Plus you do not have                                                            |
|to update software unless there is a problem or an expansion. Or pay                                                 |
|Microsoft Big bucks for a complete new system both software as                                                       |
|well as new hardware, every 18 to 24 months and a yearly licensing                                                   |
|fee."                                                                                                                |
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You seem to be under the misimpression that what you call "LINUX" is
an operating system. Dynamically linked binaries for one GNU/Linux
distribution are extremely unlikely to work for another GNU/Linux
distribution. They are different operating systems. Many things for
Microsoft Windows 98 will not run on Microsoft NT 3.51, but their
level of binary compatibility is far more than is common between
GNU/Linux distributions.

With any of GNU/Linux and Microsoft, a company would need to employ
someone who is competent at maintaining an installation, whose salary
would make the price of a Microsoft operating system insignificant.

At home, the operating system I mainly use is Microsoft DOS version
5. The money which was paid for it in the 1990s was for a permanent
license and I do not need to buy new software and hardware for it. It
works better than any of the other operating systems you mentioned in
this thread.