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Petition To Get OS/2 Open Source
Landreth writes "There is currently an ongoing petition taking place at OS2 World to get IBM to open source either the whole part or parts of OS/2 to the community. I would highly encourage the Linux community to take part of this open source petition as well due to the fact there are lots of interesting code base the they could benefit from. To sign the petition: http://www.os2world.com/petition/" Despite the jokes about it, there was some good stuff in OS/2; however, I'd rank the ability to open it up fairly low, since I suspect there's a fair amount of legal restrictions on elements of the code.
... you know IBM is going to have ten more lawsuits on their hands as various software copyright holders magically find bits of "their code" in the OS/2 source.
I used in the early ninties, for it's day it was very nice. I think a Opensourced OS/2 would be a good alternative to Linux/BSD, for some folks who want a more gui driven system.... It never hurts to have options.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
IBM would probably have radical difficulties renegotiating a deal to open source code that originated in Redmond.
I fear this one is a nonstarter for legal reasons.
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IIRC, OS/2 (at least Warp) shipped with a complete install of MS-Win to provide dual-OS support. The OS/2 code contained lots of integration points--if these integration points relied on Win code provided as part of the infamous "divorce decree", that would presumably be off-limits without MS's blessing. If so, would there be enough "untainted" OS/2 code left to be useful as open source?
I didn't use later versions of OS/2, so I don't know if this chimera-like architecture was changed further on...
I honestly think that OS/2 would have made a much greater impact if it hadn't had such pathetic PR support. The OS itself was a surprsingly strong and reliable system, but their ad campaigns were mind-bogglingly pathetic.
I'm not sure what the Linux community could gain by it being open source, except maybe some more efficient/reliable algorythms. As such, it would be enough for the IBM written chunks to be open sourced - they don't need a complete, functional code base.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
Why, you may ask?
There are still a number of financial institutions around the world that run on various versions of OS/2, both at the server and workstation level.
Also, as of about 5 years ago, CLI OS/2 powered approximately 85% of North America's Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), with a significant share worldwide as well.
I'm sure most of the companies still behind OS/2 are screaming at IBM not to release so much as a comment from the code.
"I don't get it." -- ObviousGuy
There is no way this is going to happen. IBM would have nothing to gain, because they'd have to hire a whole of people to go through the code, figure out what's not protected by any IP (and OS/2 has a 20-year history, so that's a lot of possibile IP), and then release it in such a way as to make sure no one notices, since the last thing IBM wants these days is to bring attention to OS/2.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I agree; SOM (the System Object Model) and the WPS are really the only pieces that would hold any interest. The OS/2 kernel was an advancement over DOS, but IBM never took it further than that (and it was still designed as a single-user PC OS, albeit with hooks for external security apps).
That having been said, I think that regardless of the legal entanglements, open-sourcing any part of their fat client OS would be in direct opposition to their "eCommerce Platform" strategy (i.e., run everything as thin clients off of Websphere), and so I agree with Hemos' prediction that this is not going to be more than a "wouldn't it be nice" for the foreseeable future.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
Writing a letter or calling IBM would be worth like 1,000 to 10,000 signatures because it tells people that you really want this, and you aren't just filling out the form many hundreds of times. If you really want to see it happen call IBM: 1-800-IBM-4YOU
This signature was left intentionally blank.
Further, history shows that IBM is likely to use a GNU compatible license if they open the source at all.
Sort of. When they release code added to an existing project, it is released under that projects licence. But most of the code that they have released on their own is under the Common Public License (previously IBM Public License). The CPL is a very nice license, simular to the LGPL in what rights it gives to the user, and the FSF has no philosophical objections with it. However it is not compatable with the GPL for technical legal reasons. That means that you cannot compile GPL(or LGPL) code and CPL code together, although you can link CPL code against LGPL.
I also agree that it would be very difficult to open source OS/2 because of cross licensing. Just one example - OS/2 is posix compliant. I would be very suprised if IBM did not have some license agreement with the holders of the SVR4 when making the posix layer. Also because they were not planning on releasing the code, they may not have kept track of every location of licensed code. This could become a bigger nightmare then the SCO lawsuit if they tried to open it up.
Someone could produce something akin to WINE but for OS2/ apps. What use would this be? I have no idea, but I suppose there might be a lot of file servers, EPOS & banking code out there written to OS/2. It might be a big win to someone if that could be moved over to Linux.
> That and Microsoft did whatever they could,
> legal or otherwise, to kill OS/2
So did IBM.
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