In a letter of recommendation to support my now moribund academic career, one of my professors once referred to my various entrances and exits from the ivy covered halls of the Academy as 'peripatetic,' a venerable word from the Greek which means, basically, wandering. This editorial, like so many of the other aspects of my life and work, is also destined to wander about in apparent aimlessness, but I hope to finally bring all the loose ends together in a quite impressive bit of punditry. Our story begins last Fall, when I answered a note from a fellow journalist and found myself living out a tiny bit of plot which seems to me incredibly symbolic of everything I've ever noticed about the OS/2 world.

A Tale of Two Writers

You know you're in trouble when . . .

I was not pleased. Not even a little. If you check out the article (it is still available as I write this), you'll notice that it's just another in the continuing series of OS/2 obits. You'll also notice that I'm quoted as blaming a lack of support from IBM for OS/2's demise. There's also no mention of a new client release, Warpstock or anything else that might balance the "OS/2 is dead," message. And Rob was right; I did hear about it. I got e-mail from Europe taking me to task for my involvement and heard a number of comments at Warpstock.

Suffice to say, I was determined to set the record to rights, so I contacted Mr. Berger's editor and took him to task for the misrepresentation that had occurred. He, in turn, contacted Mr. Berger, who e-mailed me and expressed his dismay and bewilderment that I was put out. He also indicated that he wanted to continue corresponding with me to resolve the issue, so, in good faith, I pointed out the glaring inconsistencies between the general tone of his article with the research that I had provided him and insisted that he make an effort to correct the situation.

I'm still awaiting his reply.

In the meantime, I've given a good deal of thought to the whole meaning behind this little incident and to my reactions regarding it.

So, now what?

I'm sure you noticed how mature and forward-thinking my first response was. But there is, even in something as infantile as this, a germ of Truth. After all, the mainstream has got it wrong with amazing, some might say conspirational, consistency for years and one little Senior Editor for one little web 'zine don't amount to a hill of beans in changing that, so why bother?

Well, there are at least two reasons that come to mind: an ethical one and a practical one.

As a journalist, as a scholar, as a person, I want to conduct my life with a certain minimum amount of integrity. I want to be able to believe the people who communicate with me and I want to be believed by them. Why? Frankly, I'm not very bright. As you can tell from the opening paragraphs of this editorial, I can be lied to and taken advantage of and I don't like that, so I try to avoid having that happen to me by not lying to or taking advantage of others and I don't spend much time around people that I know engage in that kind of behavior. It's a simplistic philosophy, I know, but I really want the world to be more honest than dishonest, more trustworthy than deceitful, more accurate than error-ridden. Since I'm enough of an idealist to try to live by my principles, I'll take it upon myself to correct errors, point out lies and uncover truth wherever and whenever I can. I won't save the world, shave the whales or reverse global warming, but I'll sleep a little better.

On the practical side, I'm very aware of the situation that our OS/2 community is facing. In some ways, things have never been darker. The DOJ, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, has rolled over and given Microsoft free reign to continue their relentless 'innovations', even if it means that competition and true innovation are trampled into the mud. IBM has established a definite timetable for their cessation of OS/2 development and support. The whole IT world is grappling with a marked slowdown as the United States wallows through a recession. Warpstock was much reduced in size from any other year that I've attended it, OS/2 vendors are dropping like flies, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Things certainly do look bleak, but I can find more than one ray of hope in all of this gloom. After years of waiting, we've actually got a new client version of OS/2 which spins out of a licensing agreement that few would've predicted not so many years ago. The work by Adrian Gschwend and the rest of the crew at Netlabs continues to open new possibilities for our community. For the first time since IBM dropped Web Explorer, we've got a choice in browsers thanks to a new beta from Opera Software and the ongoing work from the Warpzilla camp. The relationship between Scitech and OS/2-eCS appears to be solid and I find the promise of USB and DVD support a good indication that we won't be without hardware to run. There's also a lot of code coming from our Russian compatriots which looks very promising. There are, it seems, at least as many reasons to keep on trucking as there are to lay down and quit, but one question directly tied to this whole spiel concerns me. Can we sustain all of this momentum if we don't grow our community?

The short answer, I believe, is 'no.'

The longer, more carefully considered answer is also, 'no.'

And, this being the case, we cannot afford to allow misinformation or disinformation or FUD to go unchallenged. As long as OS/2 and, by connection, eCS, are perceived to be 'also ran' code, we won't see any new users which means we're not going to see money available for new development which means we might see all of that FUD become true, and that just isn't acceptable. So, as much as I'd like to forget the whole sordid mess with Mr. Berger, as much as I'd like to just pull the blanket up over my head and not give a damn about the rest of the computer world, if I want to have any chance to help preserve the way I do my work and the investment I've already made, I'm going to have to get out on the Web and represent my community, my publication and myself. I'm going to have to be patient, diplomatic, accurate, relentless, articulate and focused. I'm going to have to convince the vast majority of those reading what I write that I am not a kook, that I'm not so hopelessly deluded that I wouldn't know a good operating system if it jumped up and bit me on the hiney; that I really do know something about computer use, and business and good code. And any time I get my references confused, or lose my cool and call someone a 'Micro-serf' or commit any other perfectly normal human foul-up, I'm going to hurt the very cause I'm trying to support and I'm going to do all this in addition to the stuff I have to do for a living and the stuff I have to do as a father, and so on, and so on, and so on. All of this represents a lot of additional bother that I really don't need, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced that this is the only choice I have if I want to keep using the operating system that I prefer using. I'm also hoping that I won't be doing this alone. If the community as a whole embraces this in a mature, patient, professional manner, we have a chance to make our presence felt. We won't make the world safe from Windows, but we might protect and enhance our own investments a bit, which I believe will be worth the effort.