User talk:Briandavidross

Your edits in the IBM TopView article

Hi Brian, it is nice that you created an account so it is easier to communicate. I observed your recent contributions to the IBM TopView article. Please take care, that there is no conflict of interest as you add or change information. Also make sure, that you always strive for a neutral point of view and use neutral language. Unfortunately, in some cases, your additions clearly constitute a personal point of view, and even if I may share your point of view to some degree, this is of no relevance in the context of this encyclopedia project. Such comments are in conflict with Wikipedia policies (f.e. WP:POV), and they therefore had to be removed. I'm particularly concerned about two things here, because you added them again after I removed them:

• You have removed a pre-existing reference to an Infoworld article by Edward Warner. Please note, that while we all seek to express the truth, Wikipedia policies put verifiability over truth (since truth can sometimes be a subjective thing). Also, Wikipedia values third-party sources over first-hand information, because the latter is often perceived as original research (WP:OR), which is disallowed here as well. So, even if you think, Warner's statement is wrong, this is no reason to remove it, unless you find a better source supporting the statement or a source supporting the opposite. I'm not the one who put it in the first place, but I know, that this was also reported in many other magazines at this time. Everybody in the industry was wondering why IBM did this, but whatever the reasons, they did. The reference is a reliable source as per WP:RS and it supports the statement in the article very well, that's why I don't agree with your removal of this reference. If you think, the statement is untrue, please find a reliable source (as per WP) supporting your opposite claim, and then please change the wording of the sentence so that the information and reference remains in the article but discusses from a neutral point of view the two views of the statement each with their own reference. (This is how such conflicts are solved on WP.) If you remove this information again without seeking consent, this may need to be escalated. Therefore I suggest that you first discuss your proposed change on the article's discussion page, so that editors and readers of the article can reach a consensus there before engaging in edit wars (nevertheless, WP policies are non-negotiable).
• The second issue is your statement, that OS/2 would have been the first priority-driven preemptively multitasking operating system for the PC. While this may not be relevant to the article at all (and I tend to remove the sentence altogether), your statement is clearly false. If you want this to remain in the article, please find a reliable source supporting it. I would then have to find a reliable source supporting my counter-statement that OS/2 was not the first operating system of this kind. However, in this case, it is very easy as this is not a matter of views, but down to technical facts and the design of the operating system, and we can easily shortcut this process: Please make yourself familiar with MP/M-86, Concurrent CP/M-86, Concurrent DOS and FlexOS. These Digital Research operating systems pre-date OS/2 by years and have all been available for the IBM PC (as well as many other x86-machines). They supported priority-driven preemptive multitasking. MP/M-86 was released at the end of 1981/beginning 1982 (various documents state 1981, but actual delivery may have been early in 1982, I would have to look this up myself). I don't know, if MP/M-86 was the first of this kind (and don't make such claims), but it may very well be so, given that the PC was released only some months earlier. OS/2 may have been the first IBM OS of this kind, but this would be hardly relevant for the article, don't you think? Perhaps you are mixing this up with Microsoft Windows, which only supported cooperative multitasking at this time? So, again, I would like to ask you to discuss this on article's talk page, where I have opened corresponding discussion threads. Thanks. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:55, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Matthias, It's nice to find out who was making the changes to my edits on your end as well. Regarding your first concern... Edward Warner's Infoworld article. Ed only stated in his article that an "IBM source" said that IBM had endorsed Windows over TopView. No verifiable source was ever mentioned in his article nor did it exist. If you insist keeping a reference to that article on the TopView wiki, then that is fine as long as you mention that it was his opinion or InfoWorld's (probably along with their disclaimer regarding publishing false information) and not fact. Regarding the multitasking capabilities of OS/2. I am checking with Dave Morrill and perhaps even Dennis McKinley (if I can find him) to get more info about TopView tasking as well as my OS/2 sources including Mike Kogan and perhaps even Ed Iacobucci who still lives here in town to get more info about OS/2 multitasking. I originally got that info regarding OS/2 tasking from Kogan and hopefully we can come up with some verifiable sources for you on this. As a TopView and OS/2 team member I just kind of got tired of reading all the trash written about our efforts here in Boca Raton while I was at IBM. I especially felt compelled because I was responsible for promoting both products as well. Even though the OS/2 multitasking references may be somewhat irrelevant to this wiki I just thought that it might warrant more info about multitasking because it was an important aspect of TopView. As you can see (and if you experienced that era know) that much of the outside info that was published about TopView WAS false (http://dmorrill.com/david/projects/topview/intro.php) and I am currently feeling the need to set the record straight (even from outside non credable resources). I hope to get back with you soon. Thanks for your efforts.

Thanks for your answer, Brian. I am looking forward to your sources. I do not dispute OS/2's very robust multitasking capabilities (compared to MS-DOS/PC DOS and Windows), I only object your claim for OS/2 being the 1st priority-driven preemptive multitasking OS for PCs, as I personally know several other PC operating systems, which supported this as well - but earlier.

Anyway, if you can provide additional information in regard to TopView, feel free to add it to the article for as long as it is verifiable.

I can understand your feelings in regard to trying to correct false information floating in the net (there's lots of it, unfortunately). However, even more should we strive for a neutral point of view and scientifically correctness in order to not start to spread more speculation and biased information. Greetings. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 22:03, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Matthias! I did read the Edward Warner article again. According to Ed, Marilyn Mobley said that. I also believe that she might have said this as well. She was definately confused though. Ed never stated what position at IBM she held. I did some research and she apparently was someone who was offered a buyout package turned it town and used IBM time (2 years) to find another job. There was a noticable gap in the article (May 1987) and OS/2 presentation manager in October of 1988. Think about what she said though. Why would the IBM Corporation endorse Windows over TopView and even worse the coming OS/2 without just shutting down both projects? I think that she was a hardware marketing person and made no effort to sell IBM software or even better yet an "IBM solution". She said that the reason she said that was "Windows, because it was written for a GUI, is the obvious choice." Why not just say, "If you require a gui, then Windows is the obvious choice". Why? Because TopView did't have a gui api to write gui applications. I believe that TopView eventually had a GUI API (it might have even had one at that time but lacked the eventual much richer gui api provided in OS/2) but not much was written about it. I believe even my friend Steve Hancock wrote a GUI application for TopView using the TopView API. Bottom line, lets just say for those requiring a GUI immediately, Windows was the obvious choice. For those who could wait, OS/2 1.1 was the choice. Microsoft had successfully teamed with independent hardware vendors (IHV's) to provide a low cost preloaded version of Windows to the tune of probably $15 per PC (even to this day for the likes of Dell and even IBM (Microsoft had a crazy relationship with IBM regarding preloads)) so in the end, IBM Personal Systems Division couldn't compete anyhow. I will have to admit that for TopView, it was a text based environment written to run on DOS that lacked a GUI. OS/2 was a replacement to DOS that in 1988 included a GUI (and a gui api) and would eventually run even applications written to the Windows gui API (in 1992 - OS/2 2.0). Hi Matthias, I made some updates regarding the OS/2 multitasking issue. I hope this helps clarify some things regarding multitasking and multithreading. As we discussed earlier, outside sources like Infoworld tend to make claims that are not true (like "IBM Endorses Windows over TopView"). This is something that Ed Warner said to sell copies of Infoworld. Marilynn Mobley said, "Windows, because it is written for a gui is the obvious choice" (according to Ed's article). Ed never even stated what his question was to her. The question might have been regarding users requiring a gui at that point in time. I am still doing some further research regarding this articcle. Regarding the release date, have a look at this article (http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventions/a/Windows.htm), not that it is authoritative on these matters, it did however get the release date correct. Not sure where the TopView 1.0 announcement letter is.