Washing the OS/2 shame

Believe it or not. There is a psychological shame be washed first.

IBM OS/2 Warp has a shame involved on it. It is referred as the project where IBM (giant) failed against Microsoft (little one). IBM does not want to talk about it, or spend any time on it anymore.

I talked to an ex-IBMers that calls it "the OS/2 fiasco" and remembered being laid off once IBM unplugged the project.There were also thirdt parties that made hard investment on this OS/2 trying to being part of the ecosystem. Software developers that created tools, publishers that created magazines and people that focused to give services with this operating system. All of them finished dropping the platform and moving on. Some of them understand it as the laws of supply and demand, other just leaved without understanding why IBM quit on them.

"The market became a community" said Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell, being one of the last important companies to jump out of the OS/2 ship. 

Today, like 15 years ago from the era when IBM unplugged OS/2 (the last OS/2 version was released on 2001, but the management decision to unplug it was years before), I noticed that the almost all the shame had been washed. The developers that I had contact remember those days like "the good days" and told me about  the efforts they put on this project and even believed that they were helping to change the world at that time.

So today there is no shame of being or remaining an OS/2 user. Windows is in the road becoming as legacy as OS/2 compared to iOS and Android, and Microsoft has grown a bad reputation of being a patent troll against Linux, Android and open source. Linux installations has grown a lot and they understand the days when they where a minority. So today it does not hurt anymore if someone makes fun of you for using a different technology in comparison of the 90's.

The shame is washed today. The history speaks for itself and it is not necessary to bring back old wars memories anymore.