Should IBM's SOM/DSOM Be Open Sourced?

Esther Schindler sends a note about two journalists for very different publications (herself one of them) urging IBM to open-source, not all of OS/2 — they've consistently refused to do that — but instead one of its most powerful features: SOM, the System Object Model. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes at desktoplinux.com, "IBM, I'm told by developers who should know, still has all of SOM's source code and it all belongs to IBM. It's because IBM doesn't have all the code for OS/2 and some of it belongs to Microsoft that IBM open-sourcing OS/2 has proven to be a futile hope." And Esther Schindler takes the developer angle in a blog post at CIO.com: "Could the open-source community use a library packaging technology that enables languages to share class libraries regardless of the language an application was written in? I dare say it could, especially since the code to accomplish that goal was written (and shelved) more than ten years ago. All it takes to make that code available is to ask IBM to release SOM and DSOM as open-source." What are the business issues that would convince IBM to assent?

Comments

Its already there

[blackpaw]

Could the open-source community use a library packaging technology that enables languages to share class libraries regardless of the language an application was written in?

Its called .NET or Mono

Of Course!

[Tragek]

All should be open source. Source should never be hidden. It violates all ethos, it violates all truth, it violates my first GPL right to see the code!

Re:Of Course!

[Anonymous Coward]

What colour is the sky in your world?

Business issues for open-sourcing SOM/DSOM

[Duke]

What are the business issues that would convince IBM to assent?

I can think of three:

1. That it would hurt Microsoft
2. That it would hurt Microsoft
3. That it would hurt Microsoft