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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."
What if IBM's agreement with MS included additional restrictions?
What if IBM's agreement with MS didn't include additional restrictions? IBM probably got as liberal a license as they could for all OS/2 constituents; their business depended on it.
You're right but that's my point; open sourcing, just like on-selling, is dependent on the constituent licenses. To hand wave about "impossible to open source" is equivalent to hand waving about "impossible to on-sell". It's nonsense. Anyway, it's always possible to open source the in-house developed stuff while leaving out the third party controlled stuff.
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Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.