Posts by TrueNull

How did you mourn Internet Explorer's passing?

Re: So how was all that Spyglass Code in there then?..

Might you have any information related to my search? Thanks.

MS/IBM Golf

IBM/Microsoft The round of golf where MS told IBM it was now in-charge

In late summer 1986(?) there was a golf meeting in Westchester County New York between Microsoft (Gates) and partner, and IBM (John Akers and partner). I was at IBM at the time. The lengthy meeting summary was very selectively distributed inside upper IBM management afterwards, I didn't get to see that summary, I tried; I believe the information was deemed 'insider information'. Any chance someone has the summary of this famous meeting?

I have difficulty imagining Gates playing golf but that's another story. I was told both companies tried diligently to gracefully lose the golf match.

In this round of golf/really-a-meeting famously Gates told IBM they were no longer in-charge of the dominant x86 operating system. This was a BIG deal, IBM was told it was no longer the leader in PC systems or its future.

Any chance someone here has knowledge of this meeting? Forty-years later is a long time to wait for the surprise ending. Thanks

Re: So how was all that Spyglass Code in there then?..

I left out something in my reply to you.

The code written by the students at the University of Illinois for the joint-study with IBM, remember prototype code, went on to be the basis for both Mosaic and a little later SpyGlass, there were some people in common in all three organizations. That prototype code was exactly that, a prototype, not design or code fit to sell to the public. Both organizations who extended the code were for-profit, that makes a big difference.

Re: I regret to inform you ...

See my post below.

Re: So how was all that Spyglass Code in there then?..

Nope what I posted about the Browser and IBM is true.

IBM Department G19 and Department G3 in Endicott New York designed it in the early 1980s - IBM threw everything away in November and abandon the joint study with the University of Illinois in early 1988. At IBM Endicott in the late 1980s if you said 'browser', 'internet', 'TCP/IP' or 'website' you had better have already found another job. Anyone could all of the IP for the browser and HTML, etc. for $1, the problem was you had to know what it was and where to find it, very few people knew about the project.

HTML is modeled after an IBM internal tool called, get this, 'GML'. GML was used inside IBM to create mountains of printed documents that no one ever read (remember it was the 1980s, most everything was printed then) GML was written inside IBM sometime in the mid-1970s and its basic characteristics and form were passed onto HTML.

The Browser project was later taken up by the supercomputing project, and later sold to the public as Mosaic. (If I remember correctly they were physically about 200 yards away in Champaign)

SpyGlass also had a copy of the code and all of the notes. I had left IBM before the SpyGlass/MS deal, MS has GREAT lawyers! SpyGlass never stood a chance.

I never knew the details of the Mosaic-SpyGlass relationship - both of those leaders wanted to be the Star - And be very, very rich.

Any questions just ask, this is all ancient history.

No one here could correctly guess who the creator of the browser and the code that would later be known as "Internet Explorer" was,

What's your guess??

Did you correctly say IBM?

This whole thing started as a project at IBM Glendale (Endicott) back in 1983, then IBM entered into a "joint-study" with the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana around 1985 (I can't remember the exact year) to have students in the computer science department write the bulk of the code. Yes, IBM created HTML and all of the rest. The code from this student project was a prototype, no one had ever done anything like that before, IBM and the university knew that prototype code could never be good enough to ship as any sort of product. It's a long story how that student project eventually ended up at Microsoft. Why wasn't IBM involved in browsers? Of course, IBM management at the absolute highest level decided to kill the browser project and all associated projects at a meeting on October 31, 1987 (the Halloween meeting) Great strategy IBM Management Council!

Trying out Microsoft's pre-release OS/2 2.0

MS/IBM Golf

IBM/Microsoft The round of golf where MS told IBM it was now in-charge

In late summer 1986(?) there was a golf meeting in Westchester County New York between Microsoft (Gates) and partner, and IBM (John Akers and partner). I was at IBM at the time. The lengthy meeting summary was highly selectively distributed inside upper IBM management afterwards, I didn't get to see that summary, I tried; I believe the information was deemed 'insider information'. Any chance someone has the summary of this famous meeting?

I have difficulty imagining Gates playing golf but that's another story. I was told both companies tried diligently to gracefully lose the golf match.

In this round of golf/really-a-meeting famously Gates told IBM they were no longer in-charge of the dominant x86 operating system. This was a BIG deal, IBM was told it was no longer the leader in PC systems or its future.

Any chance someone here has knowledge of this meeting? Forty-years later is a long time to wait for the surprise ending. Thanks.