It's a rare and momentous occasion when IBM and Microsoft share a stage to announce a new joint venture.
As far as anyone can recall, the last time the bitter rivals came together--prior to this week--was more than a decade ago, just before the two companies had a legendary falling out over PC operating systems. You might remember OS/2, which the two computing giants hyped relentlessly as the future of the industry back in the late 1980s. Famously, Bill Gates once wrote that OS/2 was "destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time."
IBM, which once paid its software programmers per line of code written, needed Microsoft's more limber development team to make OS/2 a success. But not long after Gates wrote his words of support, his company dropped OS/2 development like a bad habit, and instead poured its resources into the development of Windows NT. That sealed OS/2's fate as a historical footnote and set the stage for Windows' eventual dominance. So what are we to make of Wednesday's joint commitment by Gates and IBM software chief Steve Mills to cooperate on so-called advanced Web services standards?
News source: C|Net News.com
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