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IBM Won't Open-Source OS/2
wikinerd writes "Following an online petition in November 2007 by members of an OS/2 online community to open-source OS/2, IBM answered by sending a letter via FedEx making it clear that OS/2 is going to remain closed-source, citing business, technical, and legal reasons. An earlier petition in 2005 that had attracted over 11,000 signatures met a similar response. Both petition letters to IBM Corp. can be viewed at the OS2World.com library. The End of Support period for OS/2 passed by in December 2006, and the given IBM's response the future for OS/2 doesn't look bright, unless re-implementation projects such as Voyager or osFree attract the necessary critical mass of operating system developers."
Seems to me that IBM's reputation as being the friendly giant to open source is unfounded, particularly in light of how much many members of the open-source community hate Sun.
Whereas Sun gave away their crown jewels, IBM won't even give away their garbage
I'm Ron Paul, and I approve this message.
How dare they not make available for free the product of shareholder investment?
"IBM answered by sending a letter via FedEx."
It was then opened with a #2 pencil, and read sitting at a desk by office depot. They examined the contents of the letter while sipping on some folgers coffee.
I just thought we should have all of the important facts of the story here.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
anyone wanna bet that IBM has some sort of outstanding contract that does actually prevent this? IBM is awfully friendly to OSS. I can't think the other two reasons matter that much in their eyes.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
funny that IBM claims Open Source is more secure, and financially viable, then cites security and business reasons for not opening the source up. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Open Source fanatic (Note the capitalization), but it makes me doubt where IBM's allegiances lay.
Wasn't Windows NT spawned from IBM's OS/2? I assume that contractual obligations between IBM and Microsoft may be involved. Would this be one of the legal issues of which they speak?
Am I wrong in this thought?
As far as I am concerned, OS/2 bled to death. When I first experienced it (this was, I think, OS/2 Warp, version 3.0...at any rate, shortly before Windows 95 was released) I really liked it a lot. It was a huge step from DOS, yet managed to stay compatible with it, and it had all kinds of technical improvements. Then came Windows 95 and I watched in agony as that piece of junk took over the world. It was like OS/2, only bad. Crashed all the time, etc. Those who lived through it probably know what I mean. Windows 95 is what got me to Linux. One day, it crashed and failed to come up again. I said "there must be something better". I knew OS/2, but couldn't get my hands on a copy. I searched and found Linux. I've been using it ever since.
Meanwhile, IBM did update OS/2, but I never saw it anywhere. Some open source projects sprang up around it, but I still couldn't find the actual OS anywhere. Then IBM announced it would be end of lifed, and I finally managed to pick up a copy of OS/2 Warp from a store that sold old junk. I couldn't get it installed on either real or virtual hardware (I think the problem was with hard disk support).
I don't know why OS/2 failed. Fact is that many people liked it but didn't manage to get a copy. By now, I would be very surprised to find people wanting to run OS/2 for anything other than backward compatibility or geeky curiosity. I don't think OS/2 still has much to offer on a technical front, and whatever UI benefits it had have likely been duplicated elsewhere. Of course, I could be wrong...not having seen a working OS/2 instance for years.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
How can they open source OS/2 when a large percentage of the code is still under Microsoft's copyright? I'm sure Microsoft would have NO problem with this--seeing as they are all open source friendly and all. No issues using their own code to dethrone Windows, naturally.
No news here people. Only common sense needed.
There was still a lot of Microsoft code and IP in OS/2, even in later versions.
IBM has already licensed off OS/2 to another company, Serenity Systems, who is continuing to support it under the name eComStation. This might have been an exclusive agreement. There is again, of course, all the issues with whether or not the actually own all the stuff.
I beta tested all of the OS/2 releases and the MS license / patent issue is the only reason I don't think this will ever be released. IBM is a okay company when it comes to Linux, (specs, drivers, etc) but I'd never expect to see OS/2 offered as open source, due to the above mentioned restrictions.
In retrospect I do believe that MS pulled the plug simply because of the "lock-in-factor" on their OS. (they don't share well with others) OS/2 was a very nice OS back in the day. And yes, it ran well.. was better than DOS and made Windows look like crap back in the day. (if ya never ran it, then mod yourself -1)
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
"...a variety of business, technical, and legal reasons..."
Business - We're sorry, some businesses are still using OS/2 for some mission critical stuff, we've reviewed the code and it's got some major security flaws. By making it open source, these companies who still use the software will be open to all sorts of attacks as we've stopped supporting the software and won't be releasing any new patches.
Technical - We want to fix all the flaws but it's not worth our time, we could release the code and have the community do it but most of these businesses lack the IT guys to do the massive updates on all their systems (otherwise they'd be using something other than OS/2) so they'd be open to attacks of anyone who cares enough to try.
Legal - We didn't write all of our own code, we borrowed from a few places and signed some agreements that say we can't show anyone else the code. We could make half the project open source but that'd be pretty useless and people will get on our case about not releasing all the code, then there's the whole exposing all the flaws problem, which leaves no one happy in this scenario.
Yes I know security through obscurity doesn't usually work, but this product has reached it's end of life, there won't be any more updates. IBM realizes they have some big customers using OS/2 for some pretty major stuff and if they were to just show the world OS/2s exploits, it might end badly for a company still relying on OS/2. They're probably not going to trust the community submitted patches (they can't afford to have the systems go down, and as far as they know the systems are rock solid so why chance bringing everything down to close a hole that someone MIGHT use to cause damage.) Then when something happens and someone causes some damage exploiting a hole, the company is going to sue IBM for releasing the code and making the attack possible.
Anyway, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Physically mailing a letter in response to an online petition suggests one of two things:
I'm betting on #2, based on my experience with ludicrously large companies -- often, they take an "ain't broke" attitude with respect to various departments. Some departments are broke, and so get fixed. Other departments ain't, and don't.
But I'm too lazy to get a free registration to view the original PDF. Anyone else want to confirm?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I doubt there's very much in the code that would be all that valuable. I suspect anything that is unencumbered from Microsoft IP and is useful has probably already made its way through the channels and into the Linux kernel. About the only thing that I think might be valuable is the Workplace Shell, which, despite the major failing of a single synchronous message queue, still stands as one of the most inventive GUIs out there. But I suspect there's a good deal of Presentation Manager code in there, and that again means Microsoft IP.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
But not in the way the BSA would have you believe, the simple fact was that like you, people like me couldn't get their hands on OS/2 through copyright infringement. For the record I stayed with DOS for far longer and later W95 (wasn't till the early parts of W2K that I learned about unix and later linux) but the simple fact is that MS has had a simple advantage, its software is available to those who for what ever reason don't buy their software in boxes.
I did have my hands on a trial of OS/2 Warp, but I never managed to install it on my PC. Another advantage to W95 which was buggy as hell and often had problem during install BUT did eventually run.
A similar problem is happening right now with Vista, hard to pirate, so I haven't tried it.
So what you ask? Well like many here I am the IT support guy in my social circle and I can't support Vista because I don't know it. How are you going to answer a call asking how to change a setting when you have no idea what is where? I am not going to claim that people I know stay with XP because they can't get support from me otherwise but it is a simple choice, learn windows Vista when you never learned/wanted to learn Windows in the first place, or stay with XP I will be happy to hand you a copy off.
QUESTION: I don't know why OS/2 failed.
ANSWER: Fact is that many people liked it but didn't manage to get a copy.
Piracy has been a critical element in MS rise to fame. With Vista they are taking a gamble, has their lockin become powerfull enough they can now survive without it? Personally I think it has, but you never know. MS might soon face a real nightmare, being beaten NOT by a competitor they can out advertise or EVEN outperform, but beaten by their own product.
Or not, Vista ain't a ME yet and ME never threathened their business model.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As an African American I find this extremely offensive.
To have such vile things said on a prominant website on MLK day is unconsionable.
You should be ashamed of yourself for posting this garbage, vermin. Ban this hate speach. Banish it from the internet.
We won't be free until every racist is silenced.
IBM cannot OSS OS/2 parts of it are owned by third parties, lots of the code comes from Microsoft. There also is eComStation for companies who have to use OS/2 onward. But besides that there is nothing in OS/2 which is interesting anymore. While being very sophisticated for its time, there is no part in OS/2 which has not been covered better nowadays. Decent multitasking (Basically every OS currently in existence) OO Desktop, KDE definitely has 10 years more sophistication than OS/2 ever had Decent C++ class libraries as core APIs for the OS, again look at KDE! The rest is an out of the mill os, with a flakey 16 mode and a decent 32 bit mode. The only interesting thing is the small resource footprint which would make it a nice cellphone and PDA os noawasays, but that Window was missed by IBM! Id say let it commercially live on as eComStation and once its times are over, let it die!
Just run your old OS/2 schtuff on VMware. Abstracting it will keep the old crap going as long as needed till you can phase it out.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Thanks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mourning I loved OS/2 a decade ago. IBM got the short end of the stick in the whole divorce with M$ with regard to OS/2 and never recovered. The operating system is fast (MS-DOS will be faster on today's computers), but there is a reason why people moved on to more mature environments and kernels. Even IBM recommends people migrate to Linux. Sure WPS is good and yes, I miss work area templates, but enough already. Let it go...
moderate me a troll but i could have sworn ibm sold os/2 to a german company that makes POS solutions: http://www.ecomstation.com/
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
Yes, I was a big fan of OS/2.
I briefly went to Windows95, after my install disks died (bloody weird format, too). That didn't last long, and in a fury of frustration, I decided to look at Linux again.
I never looked back. Oh yes, I miss some things. I miss Workplace Shell most of all, but then KDE does most of what WPS did. Indeed, having Linux gives me a lot more useful stuff that I never even had with Warp or any other OS. I don't miss it so much anymore.
IBM had something great but didn't defend it very well in the marketplace. I'm probably better off having gone the Linux route.
--
BMO
..with Sun comes naturally. Sun has opensourced three crown jewels: the newest Ultrasparc core (opensource HW), Java and Solaris - together with their most advanced disk resource management system, ZFS.
Somebody care to remind me which products of similar strategic importance to IBM, did IBM opensource?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Then let's claim eminent domain. We can have the property condemned as a public hazard... oh, wait...maybe we should save that for windows :-)
What?
Actually having the OS/2 scheduler as an option would be great for Linux on the desktop. The OS/2 scheduler (in client mode) is great for giving the user the feeling of responsiveness without starving background tasks.
The foreground application gets a priority boost and an IO boost giving a great feel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Is it possible to obtain OS/2 legally for free? I'm just asking out of curiosity since I'd like to give it a try. I remember seeing all those ads in the early 90s (or was it late 80s...) on magazines (mostly Byte) but I never really had a chance to try it.
Is there maybe a repository of "abandonware" software, such as Desqview and the like? I'm feeling a tad nostalgic tonight.
No sig
Actually, it took away people's choice. If you kill all the members of a particular race, people are no longer able to choose whether or not to see them, are they?
Anyway, I remember installing OS/2 Warp on the smokin' fast 486/100's there. They had at LEAST 16 MEGS(!!) of ram, and were dual booted with windows95. The OS/2 was for the processing intensive RDBMS stuff.
That was when I was working (kinda) for a 60 year old lady who couldn't use a computer. Every month she'd tell me to get her a new mouse. The first couple times (after which she hated me) I showed her how to clean it. After that, I just rotated 2 of them with her, replacing them without a word :)
Well hold your flamethrowers a bit...
In 1994, I worked for IBM and involved in testing of OS/2 (pre-warp time if my memory serves) in Hong Kong. I mainly helped testing business applications, especially Chinese apps. There's another team who were testing games(dream job right)?
The game team always invited me for 'professional opinions' because I were like a profession gamer to them. I managed to run 4 sessions of Ultima 8 in a 386. The gameplay play was smooth, even the opening video was being played without hiccup. Awesome. Imagine it's during the period when its top competitor Windows 95 would crash from time to time running one sessions of Ultima 8. I don't want to bore you with the details how great it run other applications, but I can tell you it can run more than one session of Windows 95 full-screen and windowed. (I heard Microsoft had some legal questions with that later on.. but still, OS/2 could really do that).
Don't laugh at OS/2, it sold, millions copies; some came along with PS/2, some were embedded in ATMs and cashiers. They stopped update and development since 2006, but still, OS/2 installed machines generates revenue for IBM, even today.
Where OS/2 failed was some top boneheads in IBM asked their major software competitor, Microsoft, to develop the initial OS/2 1.x. Microsoft still owns many of the royalties inside OS/2. The more OS/2 sold, the more Microsoft got. I've been told later IBM had difficult time in negotiations with Microsoft on lowering the royalties fee in new contracts, because, obviously, crushing OS/2 benefits Microsoft more than letting it survive.
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/Database/PrintingSummit2000#OMNI
"No, this sort of FUD keeps resurfacing. If they didn't own it they couldn't have sold it to Serenity Systems."
That depends on the terms of the contracts they have with the IP holders, now doesn't it?
"This is no different whether closed or open source and FUD'ers who claim that something "can't be open sourced" are usually just bullshitting. It's almost the exactly the same as saying "can't be sold"."
Ni, it means that it can't be sold under YOUR terms. Which isn't the same thing as "can't be sold".
"Open sourcing is the equivalent of a normal sale but for zero dollars."
Well except for that pesky GPL.
Where would the major flaws be? OS/2 installed without any services running. Networking used straight NETBEUI so was unroutable and now a days simplest to use Samba. The stack is ported from AIX and is considered very solid and the current browser is Firefox which is also considered secure.
Of course the client was single user so if you had access to the machine you could do damage but I have yet to hear of an ATM being hacked little well any other system running OS/2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I think this is just about the most bizarre and most confused post I've ever read. I hope the next time you see mushrooms growing in your back yard, you don't eat them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And 6 million missing jews. I assume they're all hiding in attics running the world banking system or something?
Now how can we argue with that? I think we are all indebted to AC here for clearly stating what had to be said. And I'm glad the children were here today to hear that speech. Not only was it authentic frontier gibberish, but it expressed a courage that is little seen in this day and age.
I used OS/2 back in the day. From version 2.0 to 3 to Warp 4. I liked it a lot. However, once I learned about Linux, and learned how to use Linux, I really never missed anything from OS/2. What do you want from IBM? The source to an old OS strongly tied to a specific architecture that is becoming extinct? Why? What exactly does OS/2 do that Linux does not do? The workplace shell is the only thing I could guess might be neat. Sure, it's a cool interface. But there are honestly more advanced and more useful interfaces these days. I sincerely doubt IBM will be launching lawsuits against anyone who wanted to use the concepts in WPS, if someone found them useful anyway. Seriously, I'd like to know what it is that OS/2's code would help the open source world accomplish.
-Lod
Actually up till a year or so ago OS/2 would install on any decent hardware that Linux would install on. Now you are limited to ATI video cards if you want to use an up to date one. OS/2 supports most all hard drives, lots of sound cards, networking is getting trickier but there is now a wrapper to use Windows drivers. USB support isn't to bad though as usual IBM followed the standards and MS didn't so often a thumbdrive has to be reformatted and have a partition table added. Also once again it you need quality hardware.
Also of course you need the newest version especially if you want to take full advantage of that new quad core cpu.
There is a live CD here, http://www.ecomstation.com/democd/ if you want to try it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
So they should spend an absolute fortune on preparing the code for release, separating it out from the stuff that doesn't belong to them and spending thousands of lawyer hours checking that it's all okay to release for what, 11,000 petitioners? Just to put that into context, the current petition to get Goldeneye on XBox live arcade is at 18,000 signatures and growing.
It's not as if once they'd removed all the stuff didn't belong to them they'd be left with a working system, just random chunks of code, many of which will likely be somewhat worthless without the rest of the code that had to be removed.
None of Sun's crown jewels run ATMs or unattended cash machines.
IBM's OS/2 still does run.
That's a vast difference.
Open sourcing Eclipse is enough.
ZFS does not belong to Sun alone.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
The World Almanac of 1938 gives the number of Jews in the world as 16,588,259. The New York Times, February 22nd, 1948 placed the number of Jews in the world at a minimum of 15,600,000 and a maximum of 18,700,000. Quite obviously, these figures make it impossible for the number of Jewish war-time casualties to be measured in anything but thousands.
Solaris is predominantly System V, isn't it?
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
In theory you can do anything you want to yourself, but you have no jurisdiction on other peoples lives without their consent.
I also have to have a good laugh with your final paragraph, either your trolling, or just a fanatic. Either way, there is plenty of evidence supporting the existence of extermination camps. If you want to prove otherwise you can reply with concise evidence supporting your view. Otherwise i'll just continue to laugh at your ignorance/trolling.
Because Jewish people don't have kids.
The HP and Epson printer drivers, if I recall correctly, are not open source, but is still contained within OS/2. Open sourcing OS/2, or even parts of it is quite a bit of work. What has to be done is to determine what separately buildable components contain ONLY IBM code, and then create the build procedures for them. Then take the other-owned code and build that in. This does not take into count of license fee payments per seat/sale/etc.
Fight Spammers!
Solaris runs a lot of mission critical systems. The difference is that it is BSD based and largely open source to start with, and as a result, much less buggy.
Imagine the chaos if even more windows source code found its way into the wild.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Because 6 million Jewish people are born every ten years.
If they can get an argument for Copyright Infringment it becomes potentially very profitable.
OS/2 is still widely used in banks. Releasing it as open source could be seen as allowing the code to be dissected, possibly uncovering new security exploits.
Offtopic, but didn't IBM said they'd put 35 programmers on OpenOffice.org. Did they change their mind?
My worst enemy gave me a copy of Windows for Christmas.
Parent is just copying post from a clever troll known as Jerry Lee Cooper.
See http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12355-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=31199&messageID=579806&start=43 or http://jerryleecooper.com/ for a best of.
Make that "software SUPPORT".
IBM makes most of it's money by providing support services of the software they sell or give away. Given IBM's history, they only seem to sell software that is in some way "exclusive"; the only with a certain key feature. As soon as their software has viable competitors, they open source it to kill of the competitors' product and provide only services.
Being a company the size of IBM, it makes sense to kill both your own and a smaller competitors' products; the competitor will die with it's main source of income gone but the large company will survive to sell support for the only remaining vendor-supported product in the market.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Back in those days I had a Mac || which was the ultimate fast coolest home machine in my geek BBS world.
Windows *was* around but it was slow and buggy on the XT/AT class machines that were around. The competition that Mac owners were worried about was OS/2 and Presentation Manager which was arguably superior to the MacOS of the day. Unfortunately, Windows came first and there were apps for it and (almost) none for the new OS/2.
So the brilliant marketing boys at IBM decided to support Windows and Windows apps under OS/2 and market it as a "better Windows than Windows". And it was - about the only stable way to run Windows before 3.1 was to run in under OS/2. So they basically supported MS's buggy product and discouraged migration of apps to their much superior system (why not just develop for Windows if OS/2 can run Windows too?). When MS finally fixed Windows, there was no reason to run it under OS/2, no reason for most of the buyers to continue OS/2 and no reason for developers to do the considerable work of porting their DOS apps to OS/2 rather than Windows 3.1.
That was the analyses that I remember from back then anyway.
Not that I'm privy to the contract, but wouldn't this be a work for hire?
An event photographer tried to claim he had copyright on the photos he took. However, it turned out that this counted as a work for hire. The copyright reverted to the company.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Please tell me he'll also enslave all the dumb white rednecks like you as well, and he can have my vote.
We could have gangstar vs. trailer-trash battles in a giant stadium called the Massivium, or the Titanidrome or something - that would be the peak of civilisation. Pass the popcorn!
WHAT "business needs" are in the way. What legal or technical needs are stopping this? Are the NDA they are under specifying they can't talk about it or who it's from? If IBM mentioned this, those people who want OS/2 open sourced would be able to beard THEM rather than IBM. NVidia once tried this and said there was SGI "IP" in their drivers that forbade them opening the code. SGI were asked and said openly and categorically that they knew of none of their IP NVidia were allowed to use that was not fine with them open sourcing. Still NVidia didn't open source their driver or their hardware.
Either
a) there's others' IP but then why don't tell us whose (why?)
b) there's some SGI stuff in there that they shouldn't be using because they have no license
of course, it could be
c) they're lying and they don't WANT to
But if they don't say anything other than "we can't for legal reasons" we can only go by (c).
Thanks, I couldn't work out if this was supposed to be funny. :-/
sweet troll dude.
There's people still using it? I know I still have my copy along with amipro and several other apps. But I stopped using it soon after linux became useful over a decade ago. The shell was great but I think other interfaces have surpassed it. As for the rest, like the amiga, too few apps, weak market support, and costly to keep up. It did work well when not running windows and looked great. I kept it for serious work but that was it. Eventually linux took the reigns for the business end and I always needed windows for games anyway. The machine it ran on was eventually sold and I never got around to installing it on a different one. The versions I had were the 2* series and OS/2 Warp 3.0. Warp is still down stairs in its original box combined in a sack with amipro, backmaster, and other applications.
I'm sorry that you're a slave to political correctness, but your belief does not define reality.
As far as objective measurement goes, niggers are the dumb ones. The dumbest of all races, objectively measured. The most violent, objectively measured. Yet anyone bringing this fact to light is criticized irrationally.
I see the summary includes a plug for FedEx. Odd. /.?
Product placement on
Tip: It's not mail fraud if you use FedEx.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
Anyone who needed until 2008 to see this ain't too bright.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Played with OS/2 from 1993 until late 1996. I think I've used 2.1, 2.11, 3.0 and even 4.0 (Merlin?) after upgrading my previously 4MB 386 to 8MB and then later to a whopping 16MB (and a 486 and later a Pentium). It was an exhilarating, rewarding but often also excruciatingly frustrating experience.
It multitasked better and more stable than Win95, but was hampered with missing hardware and software support. And the lack of marketing and market understanding on IBM's side.
I abandoned OS/2 when it was finally clear that IBM would not improve it neither on the home user nor on the business side.
Remember that O/S2 was a joint effort by IBM and Microsoft. I can't ever see the avaricious monopolist ever agreeing to release the sources because a huge amount of it landed up in the NT codebase. That young Bill was getting $6 for each copy of O/S2 sold by IBM. I wish I could find my original disc, 'cos I'd love to try it out inside an instance of VirtualBox or some such.
By 1983, Ken Thompson had moved on to Plan 9 which not only has considerable geek value[3], but was later open sourced so you can read that source code if you're so inclined. For System V internals, the Bach Book http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=8570 contains sufficient detail to write your own kernel.
6th Edition Unix has considerable geek value and it was "open sourced" - the so-called Lion's Book with the famous long comment in the scheduler regarding some context switching magic and ending with "you are not expected to understand this".
The one piece of source code I'd love to be able to find and read again was an include file of VM and swapping constants that included a discussion of VAX core memory costs as driving selection of some of the constants. That appeared in both of the m68k System V/R2 systems I owned in the 80's.
The OS/2 afficionados should just bite the bullet, try to get complete specs on the system and clean room rewrite it. The value of an open source OS is not the direct cost, it is the value of having a system that can never be taken away from you, as this whole incident amply illustrates.
[1] A dead end Unix fork that had the first real virtual memory implementation.
[2] I was able to read through some of it and alas, I did not come away enlightened. For compilers, I recommend Davie and Morrison, Recursive Descent Compiling - http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1098737 the error recovery algorithm they describe is priceless.
[3] For True Believers that the One True O/S is the one running on Ken Thompson's desktop.
Look, I know there are some corporations out there that still run apps under OS/2 and might benefit from a FOSS release, but there are other ways.
I've got to believe that any IT person who has the time and expertise to devote to on open source version of OS/2 would have the time and experience to move the OS/2 app to another platform. Now that would be something.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
The problem with abandoned works is that it really is only when you're making money off it that you find out who says they own it.
For smaller entities, this is too expensive: they don't have enough money built up and not the size of network to make enough money from the work to afford to see if it's legally right.
However, a big company can afford the lawyers to counter any contestation. Hell, they have lawyers on payroll, so no cost to using them except the opportunity cost to use them to sue someone else.
So eternal copyright helps those making the most money from copyrights. Even more than overly long copyright does.
I still am in some respects. I was one of the first 100 people certified as an OS/2 Engineer by IBM back in the day, and I still have a Warp box running here for old times sake.
That being said, and while I'd love to poke through the source, I'd rather see some of the technologies and concepts from OS/2 opened up. I would just love to see what OSS could do for the Workplace Shell, for example. The WPS is STILL more advanced than any Windows shell ever has been. Just imagine where it might be today if developement hadn't stopped.
I also wouldn't mind seeing a compatability layer built for Linux, so that all my old OS/2 apps would work on a Linux kernel. If licensing is constrained then they could always (gasp!) put out a closed library and just expose the API.
None of it is likely to happen, but it would be nice.
Oh, this is such a blow. I was so pinning my hopes on an Open-Sourced version of OS/2. Now we'll all have to alter our plans so much. This is just so sad how IBM pulls the rug out from under the large community that was just waiting, with baited breath, for them to open source OS/2 so we can all scurry over and see what actual crap it is under the covers.
OK, so I think that we're all agreed that IBM can't Open Source OS/2 because they don't own the rights to all of it. But what is the difference between OS/2 and eComStation? I heard that eComStation was actually where future OS/2 development was going.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If we can't get the os/2 code how about the beos or the Amiga os code?
As someone who actually worked on OS/2 in Boca, I can honestly say that the networking in Fedora 8 and any other Linux distributions is much better than OS/2 ever was. OS/2's networking was a pig and a pain to configure.
The same goes for the desktop - Linux is actually better, now.
File system: Linux is, I think, there on par with OS/2 and Windows for that matter.
Also, much of the OS/2 tech and code is also used in some other proprietary OS *cough*Windows*cough*, so it'll never be Open Sourced.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
For example, I suspect that the OS/2 v2 SMP kernel would be an excellent study for comp sci students.
It's 1996, and I'm working at a university where the department IT guy is a rabid OS/2 fanatic. The whole department ran on Warp, but this brand new version of NT (4.0) has just come out with a Win95-like interface but decent internals, so the battle was on.
One day I wander down to the campus bookstore. They have copies of OS/2 in stock- the version with TCP/IP and a web browser was something like $200. Next to it was the development kit, in a plain box- $700.
On the other shelf is a copy of WinNT 4.0. $99. That $99 was the full version, and it included a full copy of Visual C++ as well.
IBM simply didn't care about the academic market at all. MS cares a *lot*- they learned from Apple that if you get people hooked earlier they are stuck with you for life.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Like Microsoft is really going to stand in the way of open sourcing OS/2, even if they do own part of it. OS/2 was primarilly IBMs work at this stage of the game, and if Microsoft was actually given a chance to schmooze the OSS camp by giving away it's 1% code stake in an obsolete product it worked on 20 years ago, I think it would jump at the chance (and hype it quite a bit).
And besides that, I think OS/2 has LONG fallen off Microsoft's list of possible threats, as well it should. If it were a Unix like OS, such as OpenSolaris, it might makes sense to keep it on the list (because a lot of people have Unix skills and could be persuaded to switch to it if it suddenly became super awesome), but OS/2? It would be starting many years behind established OS's, AND never had many users who learned how to use it anyway.
Microsoft isn't the reason this isn't getting open sourced... the real reason is our OSS frind, IBM [rolls eyes].
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
It would have to be an inside job, but the source should be leaked onto a torrent tracker late one Friday night. By Monday AM, c|net should have plenty of news material and the genie is out of the bottle.
Is it wrong, legally? Heck yeah. Is there a higher calling here? Maybe.
-BA
If you want BeOS, check out Haiku. It runs BeOS R5 binaries and some of the key employees are ex Be developers. The chances of getting the original source is slim to none. Be was bought by Palm/3Com with the intention of using BeOS for web appliances (fscking dot com bubble!), and since then Palm/3Com has been through one or two new owners. There probably isn't even anyone left in the company that knows that they own it.
From what I can tell, its no longer possible to obtain a new copy of OS/2 legally at any price. If I were part of the OS/2 community (though I cannot claim to be), I would have pushed for IBM to release OS/2 at least to make it available.
It appears that IBM doesn't even distribute or sell it in any shape or form. If you look at IBM Software by category you can scroll down to operating systems, where OS/2 is suspiciously absent. Hence it seems that no matter how much money you want to throw at IBM, they won't even sell you a copy of OS/2.
But having seen that IBM doesn't appear to be trying to make money off OS/2 anymore (I seem to recall they ended all OS/2 support some time ago), the OS/2 groups may have suspected that perhaps they could get IBM to release the license. This would sound reasonable to most people - why not just give away something if you no longer want to make money on it anyways?
But as many other threads in here have pointed out, OS/2 is tangled up in IBM/Microsoft patent madness. So it doesn't seem too likely that it will ever be released in its entirety.
Is there maybe a repository of "abandonware" software
There is a more pleasing answer to this question, I can say. There are several abandonware repositories out there on the inter-web. However, I have never seen OS/2 or the like in any of them. Generally, the abandonware sites focus on things like DOS games.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Why don't they throw us a bone and OSS Taligent... that would be cool. Hell, just the UI and compiler tools would be awesome.
Yeah, OS/2 is more useful, but HONESTLY, it's NEVER going to happen. OS2 is used on ATM machines around the world - does anybody think IBM wants to go fixing 10 year old buffer overflows on a system making zero dollars?
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
This is a really significant reason, and sufficient by itself.
In the security debate that was so common a few years ago, over whether open source or closed source was more secure, an important fact was often overlooked: The advantages of open source evaporate when deployed systems cannot be quickly and easily patched.
Open source wins because there are more white hats than black hats (and the white hats are generally more talented), so security defects are fixed by the good guys before the bad guys find them. As long as those fixes are rapidly disseminated to the installed base, security is very good. In this case, however, all of those ATMs running OS/2 don't have a good mechanism in place for updates. Updates are delivered manually, in fact. So, opening the source code would immediately put all of the ATMs on a very difficult and expensive upgrade treadmill. IBM does not want to do that to their customers.
There's another problem as well, however. Open source security works well when there are many people who care about a particular piece of software. Would there be enough community interest to find and fix flaws faster than the bad guys can find them? Particularly since bad guys would have lots of incentive to find exploits. Even if the banks were willing to endure the upgrade treadmill, would it be sufficient?
Opening OS/2 might earn IBM a tiny bit of geek goodwill, but it would earn them enormous ill will from the financial industry -- which is a huge revenue source from IBM.
It would be a bad move.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The OP is a coward who uses anonymous posts to hide his identity. But the fact that he consistently manages to get the first or second post means he's also a subscriber. Why not make it so subscribers can't post anonymously until the topic is opened up to everyone? That would limit the visibility of this kind of post without limiting anyone else's freedom.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Of course they can, in museums. Given the threat posed by the Jew in general it's a lot safer viewing them behind glass than it would be in real life and opening yourself up to the threat of their claw and having all your money stolen.
In early '93 IBM Germany started a big campaign to get OS/2 to the public. You could get OS/2 2.0 for a more or less symbolic sum (I don't remember how much it was, but quite inexpensive), with a cheap upgrade to OS/2 2.1 coming out shortly after it. And it really rocked. Then Warp (3.0) came, even better. But then the Internet came. For Windows (3.x) at the time you had to use Trumpet Winsock, which sucked but at least was there. Warp had a dial-up client, but no real LAN TCP/IP functionality. The TCP/IP stack had to be purchased separately. Expensively. But even if you wanted to, there was no way to get it: IBM sold its OS/2 add-ons only through their local partners, which just were not interested to send some guy who didn't want to purchase an entire network from them a quote over a one software package for a measly 300 EUR.
I suspect that OS/2 failed was that resellers apparently priced it in a currency that was not in circulation at the time...
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Encourage it how? By giving the creator a limited time to make exclusive commercial gain from it.
Why is more time needed today? Are content creators encouraged to develop new works after they're dead, because that's how long copyright lasts.
Unfortunately they were suppressed by corporations with huge lobbying budgets.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Hmmmm, why did you just site two different sources for the same data? Oh, because you are full of shit!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Microsoft owns the copyrights to part of OS/2 so IBM can't open source OS/2 without Microsoft's approval. If Microsoft ever agreed to open source OS/2, people would know that pigs were aloft and that all intelligence had left the corporate halls of Microsoft. (Okay, that's almost true anyway.)
All of the significant features of OS/2 have already been duplicated in Linux.
a) Workplace Shell. Workplace shell was cool, but Linux already has two object oriented desktops in KDE and Gnome that both do more than WPS did, and without the aweful MS lock that sank the whole desktop.
b) Graphics layer. OS/2 had an early version of Windows GDI, while Linux has several ways to use a graphics surface. Cairo comes to mind, but there are others. And, Linux has a good implementation of hardware accelerated OpenGL to go with.
c) OS Core. Yeah, OS/2 was a pioneering in threading, but Linux threading has gotten pretty good as of late. And a lot of OS/2's other features - such as a driver architecture, DLLs, and so on, are all there in the OS. OS/2 supported multiple file systems, but so does Linux, and Linux has better file systems than HPFS.
d) Other devices. Long a liability for Linux, Linux now supports a fairly broad array of devices in its own right - from custom monitor specifications to USB storage to graphics, sound, and networking cards.
c) Finally, I have to have the obligatory quote - Linux does the right thing with CTRL-ALT-DEL. OS/2 does not.
This is my sig.
At the time when OS/2 was created open source was not on the agenda. Also unlike UNIX, this was not some small moifications on top of sth. big, but it was a new operating system. Unlike othere here i do not believe there is one contract which binds them (e.g. to MS or the ecomstation) or something, but, looking at the bussiness practices at this time, i would guess that there is intellectual property licensed from hundreds (literally) of external sources. Probably a lot of drivers delivered with it have been done externally (i dont believe IBM had such a big in-house driver development).
OS/2 afficiandos may be better off to implement something akin to WINE (or the Amiga's AROS) but for OS/2. Implement the APIs of OS/2, a WPS-like desktop and a SOM compiler. In some ways it might even be easier to do than WINE since there are less APIs, the OS is simpler and not some moving target.
``So the brilliant marketing boys at IBM decided to support Windows and Windows apps under OS/2 and market it as a "better Windows than Windows". And it was - about the only stable way to run Windows before 3.1 was to run in under OS/2. So they basically supported MS's buggy product and discouraged migration of apps to their much superior system (why not just develop for Windows if OS/2 can run Windows too?). When MS finally fixed Windows, there was no reason to run it under OS/2, no reason for most of the buyers to continue OS/2 and no reason for developers to do the considerable work of porting their DOS apps to OS/2 rather than Windows 3.1.''
And yet, when Microsoft does the same thing, it's called "embrace, extend, extinguish". Somehow, that didn't work for IBM (and remember, IBM was the 300 pound gorilla back then).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It would be nice if IBM enumerated the various reasons. As it stands, the letter boils down to this: 'We're not open-sourcing OS/2 because we say so! Nanny-boo-boo!'
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
IBM was under a federal Consent Decree back then, so even if they were still an 800-lb gorilla, they were explicitly forbidden from taking certain actions.
Why do you think Microsoft was given a shot at the DOS contract in the first place? I'm sure IBM would have much rather provided its own simple OS, but bundling their own software with their own hardware was one of the big no-nos.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
This is precisely what I figured the issue was with OSS-ing it.
What the OSS community should do is analyze the best features of OS/2 and implement them in Linux. I loved the concept of moving to a document-centric way of working, as opposed to application-centric. Many have said that the Windows UI we've been burdened with since 95 is a half-arsed attempt at cloning the Mac interface, when in fact I immediately recognized it as a quarter-arsed implementation of the Presentation Manager.
OS/2 probably isn't worth mucking about with in OSS anyway, but a thorough analysis of it's features and interface paradigm is well worth doing IMHO.
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
That would be a dream come true. Screw KDE and Gnome.
I think the difference was that MS had market share and IBM had none and that OS/2 was not an extension of Windows. It's not like a browser or a file compression routine or some format thing that could IBM/MS could use market penetration to copy, modify and then kill the opposition. Apps written for Windows had to be completely rewritten to take advantage of Presentation Manager. They would have been far better off to be a DOS replacement and force developers to choose. I remember a lot of people in the Mac camp were thinking of jumping because OS/2 really *was* cool, something no one thought about Windows...
Hmm, what about MVS/VM and mainframes or did someone else write these OS's?
From what I understood, IBM was thinking of writing a simple OS for the PC but didn't think the market would ever amount to anything and if it did, that the money wasn't in the simple OS. Surely, even if what you say is true, all they had to do was provide the option of a 3rd party OS or sell the machine without an OS and have people buy theirs later.
It seems we are both telling the same thing, but our conclusions diverge. Maybe because I had to shell out the money from my own pocket (I was a student in those days), I have fond memories of the system itself but not from the hardware bills. May I remind you the price of hard drives before seagate dumped the market of big (2+ Gb) disks with the bigfoot line ? I fail to see how buying a second one just to put the swap instead of adding more memory helped keeping the budget in line.
During holidays, to earn money, I was writing filling stories for a local newspaper (you know, historical topics, things like that). In 1994, the computers used by reporters were ATARI 520ST. Yes, it was already obsolete, but a complete daily edition went out of them day after day. Reporters were craving for PCs with windows. In truth, even if some of them were aware of OS/2 (which I doubt), they wouldn't have dreamed the management could buy them the necessary hardware.
I hear you when you say that OS/2 is sounder than Windows engineering wise. But it needed the same hardware to properly run win 3.1 than win 95 needed natively. So in effect, as soon as win 95 was out, I switched. Not long, though, because after a year I couldn't stand windows quirks anymore and settled for Linux. I owe OS/2 for learning that a computer is not supposed to crash every other day for no reason. It helped me build high expectations from my machine, and it made me realise that Microsft could be outbested by others in the operating system realm. I'm grateful for that.
Currently there is project that is trying to recreate OS/2 Workplace shell, SOM and Multimedia Subsystem.
The Voyager SVN is available at netlabs.
http://svn.netlabs.org/
That's true, I guess, but not in the way you intended: the usual phrase for a market-dominating player is "800-lb gorilla", so a "300-lb gorilla" is a perfect term for a shadow of a formerly-dominant player. IBM had long been displaced as the leading maker of desktop computers (even PC-compatible computers), IIRC, at the time OS/2 came out, Tandy and Compaq were both selling more PCs than IBM. MS-DOS was more popular than any IBM operating system, even the IBM-licensed version of MS-DOS (PC-DOS). OS/2 on the software side and the PS/2 on the hardware side were pretty much the dying gasp of IBM in the PC market, not something it did at a time when it ruled the market.
hey, did you read the MS / IBM Joint Development Agreement ??
uhm.... You are not totally right about it..
http://www.krsaborio.net/research/acrobat/1980s/871126.pdf
Oh, really? I'd been thinking OS/2 stood for half open-source! OpenSource/2?
I seem to recall that is Sun who jumped in bed in scox and msft to fund a smear campaign again Linux? Was it not sun who handed over several million to scox, just after scox started the scam lawsuit? And the sun money was handed out at just the same time that msft funded scox, what a coincidence!
Anybody else remember McNealy parroting McBride? How about McNealy saying he was proud to be the *only* vendor who could legally distribute Linux?
I also seem to remember IBM fighting the sun sponsored scox for the last 4.5 years, and I seem to remember IBM making very substantial contributions to Linux. In fact, those contributions were what msft - I mean scox - was so upset about.
You seem to recall incorrectly.
Sun bought some x86 drivers from SCOX outright so they could open up Solaris. McNealy made the comment because of a deal Sun made with AT&T ages ago that gave them rights as good as ownership over all the code SCOX was claiming linux infringes on. McNealy was also a jerk.
And as for IBM's contributions... any idiot can sponsor a couple engineers to work on a project that sells their hardware. Sun is the only company so far to take their previously closed source flagship products ( all of them. Java, SPARC, and Solaris ) and give them to the F/LOSS community
Yes, OS/2 v4.0 was code-named Merlin. I remember that without hesitation because back when it first came out I named my cat after it. Yes, I'm absolutely serious. My non-geek friends assumed that he was named after the wizard and I generally let them- it was easier than trying to explain what an operating system is.
:-)
Not long after we got a second cat. The two cats took an immediate dislike to each other so, IBM freak that I was (am?), we decided to name the new cat APAR. APAR stands for "Authorized Program Analysis Report", and is basically IBM's internal term for a software bug. So we had a cat named after a piece of IBM software, and another named after bugs in IBM software.
Sadly, our pet situation followed the product line and Merlin is no longer with us. (APAR is doing just fine, thanks.) Even though we've since switched to Macs as our primary computers, I've promised my wife that our next cat will *not* be named Cheetah, Puma, Panther, Jaguar, Tiger, or Leopard.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
OS/2 contains proprietary Unix code!
"Sun bought some x86 drivers from SCOX outright so they could open up Solaris."
Nobody other than Sun apologists beleive that. Interesting timing wasn't it? Sun never needed those drivers before. Why is that at the exact moment that scox files the bogus lawsuit, and msft gives all that money to the scox scam, only then does sun needs all these drivers? Who are you kidding?
"McNealy made the comment because of a deal Sun made with AT&T ages ago that gave them rights as good as ownership over all the code SCOX was claiming linux infringes on. McNealy was also a jerk."
McNealy made those comments directly after scox "allowed" sun to distribute Linux. McNeally also parroted McBride often word-for-word.
"And as for IBM's contributions... any idiot can sponsor a couple engineers to work on a project that sells their hardware."
Um, IBM's contributions to Linux are generally valued around $1 billion. IBM is also spending much more money fighting the scox-scam than it would have cost IBM to have bought the company.
"Sun is the only company so far to take their previously closed source flagship products ( all of them. Java, SPARC, and Solaris ) and give them to the F/LOSS community"
Not quite. OpenSolaris is not Solaris, and I don't think Java is fully open. Although, I will acknowledge that sun has made substantial contributions to f/oss. Still, the IBM bashing post is ridiculous. IBM has done a lot for f/oss. IBM can not legally open source OS/2 - so what? At least IBM was never in bed with scox.
Please, Please, PLEASE, IBM, port the Workplace Shell to Linux.
WPS + compiz/beryl = Teh Awesomenest.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
A very convincing and logically sound post. I think you're right on all or most counts.
major retail stores refuse to give products away for free, even if you ask nicely. Group of shoppers start petition to see if that will help.
One of my first assignments straight out of grad school was at IBM, writing device drivers for OS/2 2.0. I was actually quite impressed with it. It had a few odd hiccups here and there (mainly the Microsoft-ish naming conventions for system call functions, the plethora of said entry points, the single event queue per process), but it was quite nice to write for. It even had POSIX compliance, and an X server.
It's a damn shame, because within IBM at the time there were a LOT of people who wanted to write the Office-killer for OS/2, a LOT of people who wanted to evangelize it, and a LOT of people who were willing to go the distance to allow it to thrive. (There was a rumor that a developer in Boca Raton actually died in front of his keyboard. Just a rumor, it turned out, but the poor guy did pass away.)
There was a time, when Warp came out, that some of us thought that upper management finally managed to learn something about marketing. It didn't last, as you know; that was 1995 after all.
The real crime was that OS/2 was a project replete with the work of technically skilled, dedicated developers, none of whom ever got to see the acceptance of their work in the marketplace, thanks to the arrogance and ineptitude of various product managers.
Moral of the story: Marketing isn't everything that matters. It's sometimes the only thing.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
The real question is, did they actually manage to get all of the OS/2 community members to sign this petition? Maybe if they got all three to sign it they'd be more convincing; it's hard to argue with that kind of solidarity.
One million fewer in population ten years later, and you're saying that's thousands dead? The population of the world exploded after WWII in 1946 through 1949. Here we see a million fewer over the course of a decade. Never mind the fact, too, that you're citing different sources both of which are estimates and that many Jews in 1938 in Europe probably would not have admitted to such.
Mail to their estates or find bounty hunters and next of kin to track down these people who might have liens or interests in SmartSuite patents. Make an announcement. Repeatedly: We are going to Open-Source SmartSuite less the obviously patented stuff. If you hold any Lotus-shared interests or interests not outside of IBM, contact us and we'll reward you for helping us conect the dots.
SmartSuite is a beautiful assembly of applications, and if anything, IBM could release *what it could* in the name of philanthropy, gaining eyeballs for whatever code of the year they like. Hobbyists, students, and professionals could use SmartSuite as a model for learning and maybe even a recruiting tool for IBM.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I was looking for a reply to reply to, and gave up. I worked for Microsoft at the time of the OS/2 /NT split, and here's how I remember it.
DOS 4, Windows 1-3, and OS2 1-2.3 were developed by Microsoft and IBM under a joint development agreement.
The term of the agreement was 10 years, and it covered DOS, Windows, and OS/2.
The agreement was not renewed, and expired just after the time that windows 98 shipped.
at the end of the agreement, IBM and Microsoft each took a copy of the Current OS/2 code. which IBM was to market under the OS/2 name, and Microsoft would market thier future versions under the name Windows New Technology.
The agreement was not public, and the details were no more than rumor, even inside the development teams involved on the products.
I do know for a fact that there were VERY important parts of OS/2 that were designed and written entirely by Microsoft developers. HPFS was written by a microsoft architect.
When the agreement was spoken of within microsoft, which happened often near the end of the time period, it was said that ownership of code written for those products during the time of the agreement was 'shared by IBM and Microsoft'
I do not know what that meant exactly, how close it was to the actual language of the agreement, and how it may apply to the question at hand.
Unless someone has access to the actual agreement, it seems fruitless to speculate as to whether IBM would have the right to put the code in open source, but I suspect that IBM does not have a clear enough title to the code to do so.
It seems to me that removing all the code that was in OS/2 2.3 from the source would probably make it worthless.
Sun sells hardware, too. Open Source software that runs on SPARC platforms benefits roughly three hardware companies: Sun, Fujitsu, and Tadpole. Open Source software that runs on Power benefits IBM and Momentum at least, and probably some of the PowerPC embedded sellers. IBM also has helped with lots of stuff that runs on x86, which benefits lots of hardware companies (as has Sun).
As for people never opening their formerly closed source, that's bullshit. Carmack opens all old id software titles. IBM keeps AIX closed but has moved lots of code they wrote for it into Linux. Six Part opened up Movable Type. DJB has released his code into the public domain. Adobe opened Flex. Linden Lab open-sourced their client app. The Eudora email client is now open source. Computer Associates released Ingres as open source. Watcom C/C++ and Watcom Fortran are now open. Lots of other formerly closed-source software is now open as well. I'm not sure you can tell me the stuff by id, 3DRealms, Watcom, NeoGeo, and others were not "crown jewel" bits of software.
To be fair to Sun, nobody seems to be pointing out that the Sparc and Niagara processor cores are open as well. That's something it'd be nice to see from Power or the z systems.
The beauty of SlashDot is that everyone gets criticised irrationally, regardless of their personal hygiene or brainpower.
Unless they're Richard Stallman. <3
"It still makes Windows look like its inbred retarded cousin."
I see your IRC and call windows a:
IRC + CHAT +IO + PAP
(Chimeraic- Hemorrhoidic - Asexually Troubled Inside-Out) + Psychedelically Activated Proto-thingy)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
A large percentage of the code is NOT under MS copyrights. IBM rewrote many large chunks of OS/2 for version 2, and then continued to replace code in versions 2.1, 3, 4, 4.5, 4.51 and 4.52 - MS has code cross licensing agreements on big chunks of the code though, and much of the multimedia stuff (codecs, etc) and some of the graphics stuff was written for IBM by others. They are the LEAST beholden to MS in that respect.
So, your premise is correct... but MS isnt the biggest issue in that respect (though they still are one). Many such aspects (like NetBIOS and such) aren't needed anyway since we (OS/2 community) have Samba. As for the kernel and WPS... those are not MS's - nor ever were - and those are the key things we want. As for PM - that can be grabbed from the OS/2 PPC model (as could a true microkernel version of the kernel). As for REXX - we'd rather have the code than the portion open sourced, since the OS/2 code has various OS/2 only functions (virtually the entire OS can be controlled by the OS2 version of REXX) and has various OS/2 enhancements that are tied into how the kernel can handle memory, disk, IO, etc...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Pseudonymity == bravery!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."