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OS/2 Community Tries Bounty System
Grayskull writes "The OS/2 and eComStation community are trying to get open source software ported to that platform by opening bounties and allowing people to chip in with prize money. Currently the most important open bounties are Java 6 port, Icon routines in OS/2, VirtualBox port, Extend multimedia and OpenWengo ports."
Not even Boba Fett would do /that/ job for /that/ bounty.
And more people will port Open Source software to it.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Openwengo is dead, it's now called Qutecom. Also I'm wondering whether Ekiga is not much mature, especially now version 3.00 is around the corner.
OS/2! Named after the number of users remaining!
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Exactly. OS/2 is dead, guys. Where have you been?
OS/2 has all kinds of really neat features. In many ways, it's still a signpost of things to come. Unfortunately, it's all built on top of a kernel that incorporates all the mistakes/oversights of early 80s programming techniques.
This is why Virtual Box would be useful. VMs will allow OS/2 users to receive new features/programs via other OSes.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
Seriously, this is like getting grandma a boobjob so maybe she can score a young IT guy with money.
Donate it to the community or give it up!
Someone is still using OS/2? Perhaps there should also be bounties for porting software to Win 95 & NT 4.0 and Linux kernel v1.0...
I used OS/2 Warp a long time ago. It was good, in its day. But why do people still use it late 2008?
Is it love?
Are there any technical advantages?
If it is because of a key legacy application instead of getting stuff ported to OS/2 maybe that application should get ported to the other OSs?
How hard up for money do you need to be to port GTK+ 2.x to OS/2 for $ 30?
What IBM could do:
1) Open-source the code it owns
2) Binary-blob all non-royalty-bearing code it doesn't own.
3) Sell the complete package including royalty-bearing code for the cost of royalties plus a small markup to cover business expenses.
4) Repeat for older versions
They've already all but open-sourced JFS. If memory serves, the version of JFS in the final version of Warp Server had much the same code as the version that found its way into Linux.
Looking at the list of bounties, I was struck by their paltriness(and, in certain cases, their complete implausibility, "Oh, sure, I'm sure I've got the Skype sourcecode sitting around here somewhere, definitely worth 130 bucks."). I find it difficult to believe that they'll get too many people to work on a closed and rather necrotic OS for that kind of money.
Bounties make a certain amount of sense as a means to reward the efforts of people who work on projects of community interest, and they might even direct the attention of people who are likely to be working on something in any case in the direction you want it to go. They aren't a way of hiring programmers(not at this size anyway), they are only an added motivation for the already interested.
Does an OS used primarily by a dwindling number of corporate legacy customers, often in semiembedded applications, really have a large enough pool of already interested contributors? The fact that OS/2 is closed isn't an automatic kiss of death for community involvement with a legacy system(just look at Amiga and BeOS); but OS/2 doesn't have anything like the charisma or fanbase, and it is too young and modern to appeal heavily on nostalgic grounds(unlike, say, C64).
Perhaps this will work for them, if so, great; but I have to wonder.
OS/2 was a technology leader for a long time, it was the first OS to take the desktop metaphor seriously. Its programming model (SOM) and template system is still marvelous after all these years. It was the first OS with proper multi-threading support, with voice support etc. etc. Lots of innovations happenend on this platform.
It just had one problem: It was managed by IBM!
When OS/2 version 3 came out, it kicked ass compared to Win 3.11 and Win 95. Just imagine what would have happenend if IBM had decided to put a proper fight in the desktop war.
We would have a far more advanced OS by now.
Currently we are stuck with Vista, which is a graphical update of the interface concepts of Windows 3.11!
It's a shame we are stuck in the 90s wrt human computer interaction.
To make matters worse, it is pretty much succeeded by Windows NT, which means any re-developed open source OS/2 clone will be irrelevant, as it will be like ReactOS, but years behind. And let's not forget Wine, of course. I generally love how people can get enthusiastic about vintage operating systems, to the point where they develop clones of them, it's really heart-warming generally, but the OS/2 community I somehow never really understood.
Want to print a document? Just drag its icon to the printer icon and if your word processor is written right, the document will print without having to start your word processor.
Don't like the color of your terminal window? Drop a color from the color palette to the window and if its written right, it'll not only change to the color you want, but the program will remember!
That's just scratching the surface; hpfs, multimedia, Christ, even the GNU tools all ran under OS/2 (heck, that's how I discovered tcsh, which has been my command line shell for longer than I've known *nix!).
Of course history chose the winner. The WPS was the Win 95 shell done right. It took MS, what, 6 years? to get Windows to the stability of OS/2. Alas, OS/2 is now a corpse. I understand it's still being used, but not to the extent that it could have been. OS/2 was elegant, and Win 95 brutish--having the feel of someone trying to forge the Mona Lisa with a Crayola. Of course, time marches on, and I was able to dodge the Microsoft tax all throughout college by using Linux, which has slowly pulled itself up to start feeling vaguely like the WPS. KDE 4.2 and its promise of further integration of ... stuff has my curiosity piqued.
You're right, though, OS/2 is dead, and people should be looking to migrate their software to something a little more modern.
I was a very fanatical OS/2 user. Not fanatical in a zealotish way but fanatical in that I liked doing all I needed on my PC using OS/2. Some minor issues which couldn't be done were usually easily solved when opening up OS/2 Windows. Another issue is that I actually paid for my sofware. And OS/2 knew some great software packages! If you like GQView these days; I was using something very similiar long before we even heard from Gnome and KDE.
But it became awfully tricky when IBM dropped support for OS/2 and eventually I made the jump fully to Linux. Right now I'm very happy with Ubuntu using a KDE desktop. And the fact that it doesn't have to cost me much is naturally a very welcome benefit as well.
Now, this was years ago. I sometimes try to install my Warp and Merlin CD's in some kind of virtual machine but mostly to no avail (I did got Warp running though). However, I have tried a few of the ComStation live cd's to see what it was all about. And quite frankly; it doesn't manage to impress me one bit. Sure; its a nice revival of the old OS/2 but its main problem (IMO ofcourse) is that it didn't go along with recent developments but instead got stuck somewhere in the last century.
Now; bear with me. I can understand that the developers can only do so much with it. But it would have been a lot better if they would have tried to utilize other people's researches and developments as well. OS/2 had some very powerfull desktop enhancers. Some of those even managed to build an entire business out of their single product because.. it actually sold (I bought several copies myself as well). But.. None of that on eComstation. The interface is basically the same as what we were used to, but which most of us have most likely outgrown.
So instead of wasting money on projects like these I'd think that money would be better put into OS development. But even that might not be enough to get back much of the marketshare. Lets face it; Linux has ate up a lot of marketshare. I sure wouldn't even consider going back anymore. So my stance on this? "Too little, too late", even though I admire the effort.
I run OS/2 as my primary desktop. I'm safe from viruii as there is none for it.
There is some security through obscurity.
Fight Spammers!
...but OS/2 doesn't have anything like the charisma or fanbase, and it is too young and modern to appeal heavily on nostalgic grounds(unlike, say, C64).
Ah, you should have seen the 90s! There were OS/2 fanboys that made the Apple guys look like sissy boys. They were rabid. Just say, "OS/2 is what, DOS 5.0?"
Ooooo Weeee! It would have been better to call their mother a whore!
I used to be a OS/2 user, but I stopped about 4 years ago. I sympathize with the OS/2 community, because it was my geek "home" for a while, but they're going about it all wrong. I tried to convince them a long time ago, but they never listened.
The OS/2 kernel is seriously outdated. Hardware support is minimal, and the kernel itself is just dated. It's mostly 16-bit. So there's no reason to keep it. A few people insist that the OS/2 kernel is "nicer" or "better" than the Linux kernel is some way, but these people don't know anything about kernels. It's a stupid argument.
The OS/2 community should port the OS/2 API to Linux. This will allow them to run the WPS (the illustrious GUI that OS/2 users rave about) and every other OS/2 application. This would be a one-time effort, because the API is stable. It hasn't been updated in almost 10 years. Not only that, but it's very well documented
Instead, these guys keep trying to port Linux applications to OS/2. If every OS/2 developer dropped what he was doing and worked on porting the OS/2 API, they'd be done in about a year. They would never have to ask for any more help ever again. The user base would actually grow, even. They'd be able to use all of their applications forever, even on newer hardware. Device support would never be a problem. Even businesses that are based on OS/2 would start moving to Linux. It would be win-win for everyone.
In fact, the WPS might even become quite popular. Someone might try to make an open source version of it, and it might even become a replacement GUI for Linux, competing with Gnome and KDE.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Below it, it says: Current Bounty: $0
I used to be an OS/2 developer. For me to get a compiler, the OS, a machine to install all that stuff on, and the time to do it, I would want a lot of money to do it. Let's put it this way, enough to buy a new car.
Seriously. Who really wants to write for OS/2 that already isn't doing it? I remember, about ten years ago, a club I belong to was auctioning off a copy to raise money. A good friend of mine outbid everybody, even though he made it clear he was going to take it outside after the meeting and throw it in a random trash can on his way home. He'd just finished a project that required porting something to OS/2 and he hated the OS so much that he was willing to pay good money for the privilege of trashing a copy.
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Although I appreciate that I'm likely missing the point, isn't the fact that OS/2 already well supported on VirtualBox good enough? Isn't it sufficient for your application needs to run it as a guest on a Linux or Windows host?
What's the motivation?
As i understand it, OS/2 still costs money to obtain...
So there's very little incentive for a hobbyist programmer to obtain a copy just to play with... The only people using it, will be those who are stuck with it for legacy reasons, it won't gather any new users.
There are several niche open source OS's out there, and there's no barrier to stop people downloading them to try (i regularly download new builds of AROS, Reactos, Syllable etc)
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Some of these bounties were created in 2005.
I surveyed the OS/2 user community. 95% of them drive vintage Ford Pintos. The other 5% still drive their Mom's station wagon.
I'll accept a few of these bounties as soon as I have the chance. However, right now I'm too busy porting OpenMUMPS to the Atari ST. I'll get back to you in a year or so.
Ooh, the Win16 layer reprise: Having the Win16 support in OS/2 was a major contributor to its downfall since there was no reason for vendors to make native apps when they could make Win16 apps and sell to both Windows and OS/2 users.
I am willing to pay $150 for alloy wheels for my Ford Model T, anybody interested?
Virtual Box is actually the last OS/2 program that Innotek wrote, they just reversed the usual method and wrote a program to run OS/2 instead of a program that runs under OS/2.
Virtual Box runs on OS/2 but the QT interface is a bit flaky so have to use the SDL interface.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
A VERY large national bank/mortgage originator did just that. They had their certified software on OS/2 and porting and recertifying in all 50 states was going to cost a HUGE amount of money, so they had their windows workstations upgraded with double the ram and dropped in new HDD's that had a new standard windows image with virtual PC running OS/2 and their app. This cut their workstation count for that division in half and they had a crudload of 2 port KVM's that they sold to some reseller. It was a fun project to work on, got to see a lot of the country on the clients dime =)
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Instead of this, why not offer rewards to port the interesting bits of OS/2 over to Linux. Pick whichever X server is closest to OS/2, create a fork, and start reworking it.
OS/2 is basically dead at this point. IBM no longer tries to sell it to consumers, and there isn't enough hardware support for current systems.
Instead of being stuck of a dead-end OS, drag it into the modern era. If you port it to run on top of Linux, then you automatically get newer device drivers, the possibility to run on non-Intel hardware, free development code (gcc, gdb, etc), and a huge quantity of existing software.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Look, people, it's simple.
OS/2 was a horse. More like a sway-backed nag.
It died.
More than 10 years ago.
???
There is NO profit!
Seriously - Stop beating this dead horse!
I'm just chiming from my observations but wasn't OS/2 great for digital phone systems in the 90s and early 2000s before Linux products took the crown? This is of course well before VOIP.
Of course. Heck, OS/2 is still in use in a lot of ATMs, voice mail systems, and so on today, although it's being phased out due to lack of support. But there are ATM's in my area that I know are running OS/2. Our Nortel Norstar voice mail unit at work runs OS/2. In the 1980s and 1990s, OS/2 was very commonly used when you wanted to embed a general-purpose computer system into an "appliance" scenario. That's because it was, to a large extent, the only acceptable option.
Consider, it's 1990, and you want to build some kind of computerized "appliance". Maybe it's a voice mail system, or a bank ATM, or an electronic message board, or whatever. You want to use a general-purpose computer, because that lowers costs and enables third-party "layered product" options. GP hardware is cheaper, software development on a GP platform is easier (since the test target can be the same as the development environment), and there's a bigger third-party community to tap.
So what are your choices? Linux doesn't exist yet. Commercial Unix platforms (SGI/Irix, SunOS, HP-UX, DEC/Ultrix, etc.) are very expensive. BSD is tied up in legal wranglings, and support for commodity micros (IBM-PC, Mac) is limited at the time. DOS barely provides disk services and is useless for everything else, so you'd practically have to write your own OS. MS Windows runs on top of DOS and is basically just a GUI -- inappropriate for most embedded applications -- and has stability issues. Win NT doesn't exist yet. Xenix is a joke. SCO Unix is painfully clunky and hideously expensive.
And then there is OS/2. It's a preemptive multitasking, protected memory OS. It runs on IBM-PC-compatible computers, the platform with the biggest market presence and the most third-party support -- and also the cheapest hardware. It's from IBM, the single biggest name in computing. IBM and Microsoft both say it's the wave of the future. It's relatively inexpensive when purchased in bulk. Seems like a no brainer, right?
Obviously, looking back with 20/20 hindsight today, OS/2 seems like a strange choice, but at the time, it made perfect sense.
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I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
There's an OS/2 community?
And I thought that Trekkies were nerdy.
Otherwise go the way of Commodore.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I think you have the solution in a nutshell here.
Porting the OS/2 API would solve alot of these problems, quickly (relatively) and permanently.
I wonder how many of the people who are pushing for a ground up rewrite of the OS would be happy with that.
A few years back I got a savage requirement to relive my C64 old days, and even though there were emulators that were if anything "better than the real thing" - thanks to virtual disks etc, they were of no interest to Me. I had to have the "real thing" back. :)
I don't understand it, but there it is. Thank goodness I did'nt want to run an old Cray OS
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