Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Citrix Founder and Key OS/2 Player Ed Iacobucci Dead At 59

Posted by timothy on from the if-it's-not-something-else-it's-cancer dept.

alphadogg writes "Ed Iacobucci, whose work on OS/2 at IBM helped fuel the PC craze and whose efforts at Citrix and VirtualWorks aimed to bring computing back under control, has died at the age of 59 from pancreatic cancer. Born in Argentina and schooled in systems engineering at Georgia Tech, Iacobucci got his career start in 1979 at IBM, where he held architecture and design leadership roles involving PC operating systems OS/2 and DOS, working closely with Microsoft in doing so (and later turned down a job there). Iacobucci left 10 years later to start thin-client/virtualization company Citrix, followed by creation of on-demand jet company DayJet, and most recently VirtualWorks, a company dedicated to managing big data sprawl. He stepped down as CEO of VirtualWorks in May because of his health."

7 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Citrix was a major victim of the OS/2 2.0 fiasco by yuhong · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I didn't mention it in my blog post, but yes Citrix was a major victim of the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco. It is hardly the worse of it though. Look up "OS/2 Microsoft Munchkins", and remember that wasn't the only unethical attack MS tried against OS/2 later on, which got worse as Chicago (Windows 95) was delayed. Not to mention DR-DOS too (remember OS/2 never depended on DOS).

  2. Sad loss. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    He did many good works; but by no measure did OS/2 "fuel the PC craze"... (Unless you're defining "craze" as "insane mass-market failures.")

    1. Re:Sad loss. by Zedrick · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Oh yes it did. I'm guessing you're just too young to remember. Thanks to massive os/2 tv campaigns, "normal" people suddenly wanted a computer, not just a console to play games on

    2. Re:Sad loss. by perpenso · · Score: 3, Informative

      Oh yes it did. I'm guessing you're just too young to remember. Thanks to massive os/2 tv campaigns, "normal" people suddenly wanted a computer, not just a console to play games on

      Perhaps you are thinking of PS/2, the computer, a followup to the IBM PC?

      OS/2 was an operating system and few people used its 16-bit 1.x incarnation. Microsoft was IBM's partner is OS/2 development. Microsoft tried to get people to move from MS-DOS to OS/2 1.x and failed. They then thought what the hell lets deliver that OS/2 1.x Presentation Manager GUI as a layer on top of MS-DOS. We'll call it MS Windows. OK, that was a little simplified yet basically accurate.

      MS Windows was meant to be a stop gap, something temporary until users could be migrated to OS/2 from MS-DOS. Microsoft touted how compatible the APIs were, how easy it would be to port your Windows code to OS/2. It actually kind of was. However MS Windows really took off in popularity and MS rethought things, thought they might go it alone. IBM was working on the 32-bit Intel specific OS/2 2.0 and in parallel MS was working on the cross platforms successor version of OS/2, OS/2 NT. OS/2 NT got renamed Windows NT when MS and IBM "divorced".

      OS/2 2.0 shipped, did a little better than 1.x but still it was a very minor player. MS successfully FUD'd OS/2 2.0 and got most users to wait just a little bit longer for Windows 95. Failing to deliver OS/2 development tools helped as well, delaying the availability of native apps.

      So, no. No matter how many OS/2 TV commercials IBM ran it did not drive many people to OS/2.

    3. Re:Sad loss. by perpenso · · Score: 2

      I'm with you on OS/2 2.0's technical superiority over Win 3.1 and Win 9x. A true 32-bit OS, real multitasking, real multithreading, real memory protection, etc.

      My employer at the time had Windows and Macintosh versions of our app. We considered an OS/2 2.0 port. However the Windows version ran so damn well on OS/2 that there was really no point. Even a few customers who were interested in an OS/2 version conceded that and understood.

    4. Re:Sad loss. by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Yep, that boot manager was great, even though it needed its own partition and didn't work with large hard drives.

      Just like WinNT 3.51 was great, even though it didn't support PCI or partitions over 2GB. Wait, what? It was great once, but then it sucked. Time moves goalposts.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Re:Citrix was a major victim of the OS/2 2.0 fiasc by readingaccount · · Score: 2

    Bah. I hate history when retold by those who lost. MS battled against OS/2 and won, yes, but unethical? No. MS just had the resources and will to play dirty, and evidently IBM did not. That's just modern business and honestly I think most companies nowadays, whether they be MS, Apple or the open-source fan's champion Google, would do exactly the same "unethical" actions necessary to win against the competition.