IBM Won't Open-Source OS/2

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Monday January 21, 2008 @06:02PM from the big-blue-meanies dept.

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."

1 of 394 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:IBM vs. Sun? by bit01 · 2008-01-21 19:59 · Score: 0, Redundant

Oh for fuck's sake. OS/2 is filled with other folks' IP,

Nonsense. If IBM didn't own OS/2 they couldn't have sold it to Serenity Systems. Open sourcing is the equivalent of selling the source for zero dollars. IBM can set whatever price they like.

FUD about problems with open sourcing gets tiresome after a while. Open source source licenses are no different from closed source licenses; it all depends on the particulars of the individual licenses as to whether software can be on-sold.

---

Integrated software = marketing buzzword for "we own all the pieces" = we own you.