By: dON k. eITNER (freiheit@tstonramp.com)
http://www.tstonramp.com/~freiheit/
Not so long ago, in a galaxy that's not too far away, a group of daring people
got together to make the world realize that OS/2 was still a thriving operating
system for home and small office users. Filled with good intent they were, but as
with all new-fangled ideas it took them a while to get everything together. They
offered people many things during their setup time; an electronic newsletter every
month, online discussions with developers in the OS/2 community, comraderie; but
something was missing--a large membership.
These bold revolutionaries huddled together and spoke of membership issues. The
question was posed many times; "Why would anyone join VOICE? What would they
get that the rest of the world doesn't?" And so began recently a campaign to
finalize many points of the VOICE position. Why indeed would anyone want to join?
The first answer is simple--if you want your voice to be heard by OS/2's developers
(and IBM?) then you'll now need to become a VOICE member in order to attend the
popular SpeakUp sessions on IRC. Recent SpeakUp sessions of note have included the
Win32-OS/2 team (nearly 70 people showed up for that one), Tim Sipples (IBM Network
Computing Software), and a SpeakUp with Sam Detweiler, device driver author extraordinaire
for IBM. SpeakUp sessions for the near future may include such people as the developers
of AccuCount/2 accounting software, the Opera/2 web browser porting team, and returns
of both Tim Sipples and the Win32-OS/2 team, who could return at any time after
an update of their amazing tool.
Regular VOICE chat sessions will still be open to the public; only the SpeakUp
sessions will be by membership only. The logs of the SpeakUp sessions will be available
on the website as always, but if you want to be there when it happens and be able
to give your feedback to help shape the future of OS/2, you will now need to be
a VOICE member. The monthly newsletter will likewise remain free to the public,
as VOICE's primary means of putting the word out on new and upcoming products, events,
and ideas.
The second answer is also simple. With increased membership, VOICE can continue
to operate and to grow, thus making our unified voice for the OS/2 market stronger
and more precise than a bunch of scattered user groups. VOICE is a more refined,
internet based, user group that gets results (note our popular SpeakUp sessions
and monthly newsletter--one of the last OS/2 e-zines on the world wide web). The
more members we have, the stronger we can lobby to get new developers to do SpeakUp
sessions, even developers who do not currently make products for OS/2 (Corel, ID,
Epson, Hewlett Packard) which would mean you would get a chance to tell them right
up front how much you and others would appreciate using their OS/2 based software
and OS/2 supported hardware (did someone say color inkjets and scanners?). Without
such support, they've no incentive to do anything off of the Windows and occasionally
Macintosh platform.
Do you wish you could buy WordPerfect 8 or Corel Draw 8 for OS/2 or an official
Quake II for OS/2? You could continue sending your solitary e-mail and having these
companies laugh at you as a single, lonely OS/2 user, or you could join VOICE and
bombard them with hundreds of names of people who would pay to get a good native
OS/2 version of their software (not a cheap port like WordPerfect 5.2), giving them
much more reason to take you seriously You can further talk to a person in their
company who can actually do something (which is always better than sending an e-mail
to webmaster@whatever.com because you can't find the address of anyone important)
during our SpeakUp sessions and tell them exactly what you want, how you want it,
and what price you'd be willing to pay to get it. We were all exceptionally lucky
that Opera Software took the initiative to do Project Magic and ask us to show our
support for their web browser, but history has shown that we can't rely on most
Windows developers to do this--we must present them with the reason to develop for
us.
The third answer to the question is not so simple. There are several options
being weighed at this time by the VOICE executive board that would set VOICE members
apart from the general public. Included, unofficially, among these are the option
of making deals with OS/2 software developers and vendors to provide discounts or
special bundle deals to VOICE members (proof of membership required at time of purchase),
offering VOICE members tangible (promotional) items such as keychains, bumper stickers,
or t-shirts with the VOICE and/or OS/2 name on them that would work to both show
your support for OS/2 and to advertise OS/2 to others, and the possibility of working
with any company that might possibly convince IBM to license a consumer version
of OS/2 to them for continued development and distribution. Again, these are all
merely possibilities at this time, nothing's been officially decided, but any of
them would have a greater chance of becoming reality with the more members VOICE
has to "throw their weight around".
Being the self-appointed voice to the world on behalf of OS/2's home and small
office (SOHO) users is not an easy task. There's an awful lot of ground to make
up for IBM's marketing failures and refusal to target any but the largest companies.
Times like these are the ones most crucial to a product's success and which most
rigorously test a user's loyalty to their operating system, and VOICE have stepped
up to take on the tasks. But VOICE, being an organization by and for OS/2 users,
needs the support and input of those users in order to do its job.
I'm writing this from my own personal view which may or may not be sanctioned
by the whole of VOICE: If you sit idly by while OS/2's image dwindles in the mainstream
market, then you have no right to put all of the blame on anyone (IBM, Microsoft,
VOICE, or Ziff-Davis) because you are also to blame for not making it worth anyone's
time and effort to adequately support OS/2. The only chance OS/2 has in these markets
is you (all of you) and so it would behoove you to become an active member and thereby
personally ensure the continued existence and success of your chosen operating system.
You and I chose OS/2 for a reason--that reason will continue to exist for many years,
but unless you and I speak out now, it may not be provided to end users and small
business users next year at this time. You've got nothing to lose by joining VOICE
and everything to gain.
In the end, the good feeling you get from knowing you did the right thing in
promoting an open market where competition, not marketing blitz, sets the rules
should be your greatest reward. The extras that might go along with a VOICE membership
are just that--extras. If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the
problem, and OS/2's home/SOHO market has enough problems from IBM without idle users
making it worse.