I.B.M.-Microsoft Feud Roils a Trade Show

I.B.M.-Microsoft Feud Roils a Trade Show

By Laurence Zuckerman
The New York Times

August 21, 1995

The simmering hostility between I.B.M. and its onetime partner, the Microsoft Corporation, burst into the open last week, after I.B.M. disclosed that Microsoft had put pressure on the organizers of an industry trade show to remove one of I.B.M.'s top software executives from the program.

Leland R. Reiswig Jr., head of the International Business Machines Corporation's personal software products division and an outspoken critic of Microsoft's Windows software, was scheduled to deliver the closing keynote speech at the Windows Solutions trade show in San Francisco on September 1.

But when an executive at Microsoft, which licenses the Windows name to the event and has veto power over who speaks, learned that Mr. Reiswig would be appearing, the executive ordered the organizers to rescind the invitation.

Cameron Myhrvold, director of developer marketing at Microsoft, acknowledged that in late July he had asked the show's organizer, the Softbank Exposition and Conference Company, to cancel Mr. Reiswig's appearance. But he said that he changed his mind a few days later and agreed to let Mr. Reiswig participate.

"It was an overreaction on my part," he said in an interview.

The two companies disagree about what happened next. I.B.M. said that Softbank asked Mr. Reiswig to return, but not in his original role as a keynote speaker. Microsoft and Softbank said that Mr. Reiswig was offered the same slot as before.

In any case, earlier this month I.B.M. decided not to participate in the show, withdrawing not only Mr. Reiswig but its exhibition booth, which was to have been one of the largest at the four-day event. Word of Microsoft's action leaked out last week, after a memo was issued to some I.B.M. employees explaining the company's decision to withdraw.

"Microsoft decides what they want users to have, they set the proprietary, closed 'standards' they want developers to adhere to, and now they choose what speakers Windows users get to hear," wrote Dan J. Lautenbach, vice president of worldwide marketing for the personal software products division, in the memo.

Microsoft and Softbank said last week that they would still like I.B.M. to participate in the show. But I.B.M. said Friday that there was now too little time for Mr. Reiswig to prepare the multimedia presentation he had planned.

The row flared up less than a week before Microsoft is scheduled to roll out its long-awaited Windows 95 software. It is also the latest episode in what has developed into an acrimonious relationship between the two companies.

In 1980, I.B.M. chose Microsoft, then a fledgling company, to provide the operating system software for its new personal computer.

But the two companies fell out in the late 1980's, when Microsoft abandoned joint development of a new operating system called OS/2 in favor of Windows, which can now be found on most personal computers.

Mr. Reiswig is head of the I.B.M. division that develops and sells OS/2, which despite recent sales increases, has only a fraction of the number of users that Windows does. I.B.M. is trying to get more independent software developers like the ones expected to attend the Windows Solutions show to write programs for use with OS/2, and he is not shy about denigrating Windows.

Mr. Myhrvold said that he regretted his initial reaction to the news of Mr. Reiswig's participation and pointed out that Lawrence Ellison, the chairman of the Oracle Corporation, another big Microsoft rival, would be delivering a keynote address at the show.