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.

Comments

I'm In (293) - Many More Needed.

[Allen Zadr]

The total number of registrants for this OS2 petition: 293

Thank you real name, your registration was successful.

I've got to say - even if 40% of OS2 is opened up, the benefits to many, many projects could be wide-spread. Further, history shows that IBM is likely to use a GNU compatible license if they open the source at all.

They obviously need more names. Posting it here though will make a nightmare for those who need to clean up the petition.

Re:I'm In (293) - Many More Needed.

[pavon]

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.

The instant the source is released

[mferrier]

... 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.

Microsoft owns a lot of the code

[SocietyoftheFist]

It taint gonna happen.

MSFT will say no

[DaHat]

Lets not forget that OS/2 was jointly developed by IBM and Microsoft and no doubt Microsoft still has significant rights to large portions of the code base. I find it very unlikely that they would let IBM release the code even if IBM wanted to.

Re:MSFT will say no

[Locutus]

The ability for OS/2 to run Windows 16 and 32bit code was because IBM did a great job at the DOS virtual machine. It really was Windows 3.x running in OS/2. IBM even had Windows 95( aka Chicago ) running on OS/2 until Microsoft found out and then made Win32 apps load a tiny bit of data at and address space outside the reach of OS/2. I think OS/2 processes had 512MB of virtual address space while a Win32 app had 1.5GB or something like that. So OS/2 ended up only able to run Win32S applications and not Win32C or Win32NT apps.

It was pretty cool running all those different systems on one OS though. At one point, I ran Win16/32s apps with OS/2 apps, XFree86 apps, and JAVA apps. Even wrote X11 apps for HP-UX systems on OS/2 and NFS before recompiling on the HP-UX system in the lab for final testing. It was sweet and the WorkplaceOS was supposed to take that concept to the OS level. Kinda like VM-Ware but with host OS and client OS integration.

But all this is and was a theat to the "One Microsoft Way" kind of thinking. To Microsoft, competition is BAD. Very bad. That's why their way of competing is to do anything to prevent the competition in the first place. See DOJ vs MSFT court docs for a small set of examples of this.

LoB

Windows DLL Code

[ToPAz3in6]

OS/2 has a Windows (3.1) compatability layer which uses a lot of DLL code given to them under agreement back in the early 90's. There's your roadblock. (or your target...)

Not going to happen for a long, LONG time...

[Zab UvWxy]

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.

Re:Not going to happen for a long, LONG time...

[sremick]

ATMs are being replaced rapidly with newer models running Windows code. A lot of the color-screen units being installed now run Windows

Yep, those would be all the ones with the BSODs.

And I'm not just being a random MS-basher here. The number of ATMs, flight-info displays, and price-check terminals with BSODs these days is staggering. For all you MS-apologists out there: when was the last time you saw an ATM with an error that wasn't an Window error?

Cash machines

[AltoClef]

Given that OS/2 is in a good many cash machines/ATMs, I wouldn't be surprised if there are contractural problems with opening the code up. Security through obscurity and all that.

It'll never happen

[LouCifer]

And here's why.

IBM sold OS/2 off and it became eComStation ("jointly developed" - whatever). I highly doubt big blue has exclusive rights to the code anymore.

Go ahead and sign the petition, we all know how much weight internet petitions carry.

I, for one, would love to see both of these pan out. Unfortunately they probably won't.