Many PC manufacturers signed up as PS/2 licensees. (Apricot, who had lost badly by persevering with their "better PC than IBM" strategy up until this time, was one of them, but there were many others.) Many others decided to hold off before committing themselves. Some major manufacturers, known as the Gang of Nine, decided to group together and decide on a bus type that would be open to all manufacturers, as fast as or faster than IBM's Microchannel, and yet still retain backward compatibility with ISA.