OS/2 e-Zine! - A Changing Of The Guard

A Changing Of The Guard

- by Trevor Smith and Dirk Terrell

Trevor Smith - Haligonian Media

By now many of you may have heard the news that OS/2 e-Zine! has been purchased by Falcon Networking, the company responsible for the OS/2 Supersite and many other OS/2 resources. (The sale was first announced on the WarpCast News Service on August 21st.)

As you can imagine, the decision to sell OS/2 e-Zine! was something that I took very seriously. It has been my job, my passion and my life for the past three years and saying goodbye to it will not be an easy thing. Still, it was the right decision for me and for the magazine.

When I decided that it was time for a change, obviously the most important thing to me was finding the right owner for the OS/2 community's premier magazine. Fortunately, the company at the top of my list, Falcon Networking, was my first and last stop. I knew that Dirk Terrell -- Falcon's owner, long time contributor to OS/2 e-Zine! and dedicated OS/2 aficionado -- would be capable, enthusiastic and eager to move OS/2 e-Zine! forward in ways no one else could.

Now that I am stepping down as Editor-in-Chief, Chris Wenham will also get the credit he deserves as the backbone of OS/2 e-Zine!. His promotion from Senior Editor to Editor-in-Chief is an overdue acknowledgment of the sometimes superhuman effort he expends every two weeks overseeing and putting together each issue. With Chris' and the rest of the staff's continued hard work, I am confident that the coming years will be even better than the previous ones.

Since we announced the transfer of ownership many people have been asking what my future plans are. Some have worried that I am forsaking OS/2. Nothing could be further from the truth. My plans include some non-computer related endeavors (everyone needs a change now and then) but my computer use is still and will likely remain OS/2-based for the foreseeable future. I still have not found any platform that is as pleasant, stable and efficient to use as Warp and I doubt I will for a long time. While I won't be an official evangelist anymore, I will continue to carry the OS/2 torch and I'll be in Chicago this year for Warpstock. I'd love to meet you there and finally put faces to the names I've been reading on the 'net for the past three years. (Have you registered yet?)

Before I go, I'd like to thank all the readers of OS/2 e-Zine! -- especially those of you who have been generous enough to help us out financially over the years. Your e-mails and support have made the whole existence of OS/2 e-Zine! worth the effort. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Trevor Smith

President
Haligonian Media
trevor@haligonian.com

Dr. Dirk Terrell - Falcon Networking

We at Falcon Networking are very excited about taking the reins of OS/2 e-Zine! I have worked with Trevor on the magazine since nearly the very beginning because I have always believed that the OS/2 community needed a quality source of information on software, hardware, and the operating system itself. Under Trevor's leadership and tireless effort, OS/2 e-Zine! has grown to become a biweekly treasure chest of OS/2-related information. He and I worked together to create WarpCast, which delivers up-to-the-minute news to thousands of OS/2 users everyday. There is no doubt that we will miss Trevor's tireless enthusiasm for producing a topnotch product for the OS/2 community. But I am sure his input will continue to grace the pages of OS/2 e-Zine!

But where do we go from here? Bigger and better! Other OS/2 related e-zines have come and gone, but OS/2 e-Zine! has gotten better and better. And it will continue to do so. With the resources of Falcon Networking, we will be able to push OS/2 e-Zine! to the next level. Over the next few months you will see new features in the magazine. IBM's benign neglect of OS/2 in our market has caused a lot of uncertainty about the future of OS/2 for people who don't buy 10,000 licenses at a time. Any future that OS/2 has for us will be carved out by users like you and me. OS/2 e-Zine! is a big part of that future.

And under the editorial leadership of our longtime Senior Editor and now Editor in Chief, Chris Wenham, it will grow into a magazine without peer in the electronic world.

Of course, none of this will be possible without the people like yourself that read the magazine and the sponsors that give us the financial resources to produce OS/2 e-Zine! We are in a rather precarious position as a community. There are developers who produce quality OS/2 software and will do so as long as they can afford it. When they advertise in our magazine, please consider looking at what they have to offer. A healthy community requires developers who create quality products, information sources who provide a means for learning about those products, and people like yourself who purchase them. We at Falcon Networking, through OS/2 e-Zine!, the OS/2 Supersite, and WarpCast, will continue to provide quality sources of information. By working together, each doing our part, we can do what IBM seems incapable of doing- ensuring a healthy future for OS/2.

Dirk Terrell

OS/2 Supersite Administrator and President of Falcon Networking