User Group Urges IBM To Open OS/2

axonis writes "A report on Tom's Hardware tells of one of the last active OS/2 user groups, which has announced an initiative to garner support for IBM to release its long-neglected OS/2 operating system into the open source community. IBM announced earlier this month that it will withdraw its operating system OS/2 officially from sale on December 23 this year and will offer support only through 2006." From the article: "Making OS/2 Open Source will benefit all IBM customers that had invested in this OS...Customers that are willing to continue using OS/2 will get the benefits of an open OS that will be continuously developed by individual developers and/or software companies, their ownership fees will decrease and they will have the enhanced security of an OS that will continue to be relevant due to the open-ended nature of open source (following the BSD and Linux examples)."

OS/2 Info For Fellow Clueless

[N8F8]

I've heard of it and used it a little back in the day but wan't too up on the history: Wikipedia to the rescue! [wikipedia.org]

dupe?

[doofusclam]

Isn't this a dupe? I seem to recall the reason they don't open-source it is because Microsoft still owns some bits of it and banks who still use OS/2 wouldn't be happy for people to go look for holes in the code.

I've definitely told the story on slashdot before of the support line for a german company (Heilersoft?) who pronounced the name like 'Oh Ess Half'.

Re:Is IBM is stupid?

[sigxcpu]

I agree, If nothing else it has lots of code written by Micro$oft.

Project to create an Open-Source OS/2 clone

[psykocrime]

Some people in this discussion might be interested
to know that there is a project underway to create a "from scratch" clone of OS/2, under an open-source license.

See http://www.osfree.org/index.php [osfree.org] for more details.

Re:Is IBM is stupid?

[stiggle]

Actually OpenSolaris is a good comparison.
Loads of bits of Solaris were developed by others outside of Sun.

But they spent the time and effort to either remove them or sort out the licenses and then release.

Re:Is IBM is stupid?

[slashdot.org]

It was originally a colaboration between MS and IBM. So chances are MS owns some of the code.

Exactly. When I worked at MS, I have seen files in the Windows source tree that had comments saying they were part of OS/2. They were also marked as 'Copyright Microsoft' only, which implies that MS licensed their source to IBM, but kept the copyright.

The problem with Open Sourcing OS/2...

[kangadru]

Is that you can't Open Source the entire Operating System, and at this point it would cost more to perform the code audit and legal audit to make this happen that it would to simply take the black eye of killing it. If you think about it, it makes sense. OS/2 is, and never was, just the operating system. Think back to installing OS/2, especially in the pre 4.0 days. You didn't just install OS/2, you also installed LAN Server (or LAN Manager in earlier days), TCP/IP for the Internet, eventyually you got MMPM and others, but these are all seperate packages that are more or less bolted onto the core. It's probably reasonable to release parts of OS/2, but you can't release all of it, particularly the parts licensed from third parties. That's the real kicker. In order to Open Source OS/2 in the sense that most people want is a logistical nightmare that would encompass years and a cost that IBM would have no hope of ever recovering. So what is the next best option? release the source for the important parts. SOM ? can't because of Microsoft licensing. WPS? can't, Adobe PostScript font rendering engine. Those are just items from the top of my head, and I haven't used OS/2 in close to 10 years now. It's a nice dream, but it's unlikely to ever happen. kanga

Re:Is IBM is stupid?

[Pope Raymond Lama]

Yup. Actually they really can't.

The local IBM's LTC (Linux Technology Center) had even started working on a OS/2 emulation layer for Linux - about one month later the project was pulled by the internal lawyers.

Re:Is IBM is stupid?

[mschaef]

"It was originally a colaboration between MS and IBM. So chances are MS owns some of the code. "

In the summer of 1995 [1], I worked at IBM in Austin for the OS/2 Lan Server Enterprise [2]group. OS/2 LAN Server was a direct descendent of the LAN Manager product that shipped with the original joint IBM/MS versions of OS/2 [3]. As a result of its origins, OS/2 LAN Server had huge amounts of Microsoft code baked in.

In an effort to eliminate the Microsoft code, IBM had divided the development team into two groups: "Clean" and "Dirty". "Dirty" staff being staff that had seen Microsoft code and was not eligible to help in the rewrite. I don't know how far the effort went.

1] I saw a beta of Windows 95 for the first time running on a Pentium 100 in an IBM FV Test lab.

2] LS Enterprise entailed the conversion of LS Advanced to use DCE services for authentication, etc.

3] LAN manager was originally part of OS/2 "Extended Edition".

Re:Please, IBM!

[nbritton]

AFAIK IBM has full rights to the Win16 API and Microsoft has full rights to the OS/2 API. That was part of the deal way back when IBM and Microsoft parted ways.... Microsoft whent with chicago and IBM delivered OS/2, unfortunately the rest is history....

Re:Is IBM is stupid?

[frodo from middle ea]

Yes it would have , if the GGP was in fact calling IBM stupid, which I can assuredly say, he wasn't.

It was a rhetorical question, meaning to imply he doesn't think IBM is stupid.

Therefore the expected result is not "IBM is stupid", and therefore the actual result of the GP turning out to be stupid by making a spelling mistake, doesn't contradict the expected result, hence it is not irony....sigh

OS/2 is dead.. long live OS/2

[Anonymous Coward]

I used OS/2 for the better part of os/2 2.1, warp 3 & 4.. and it rocked..

They already released JFS and ObjectREXX.. now we just need the WPS and possibly the TCP/IP stack.. (it was fast.. i mean REALLY FREAKING FAST)

ahh the good ole days.. running gimp in Xfree86 window, injoy on a 486 in the back with multi-linkPPP to the ISP (yea.. dual 56K modems pfffft!) open office, netscrape, bitchX and slurrrp readin the newsgroups for ya.

I gave up with warp 4 fixpack 32 (i think.. it was getting kinda silly by then).

OS/2 has been kinda overtook by ecomstation http://www.ecomstation.com/ [ecomstation.com] so it's not quite dead yet..

The Alanis Morisette effect

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the Alanis Morisette effect in action. Your example of irony does not hold for all cases.

Your words:

Irony goes like: "Bad stuff like that never happens to me.. oh crap."

This isn't ironic, it's unfortunate - much in the same way all the examples of 'irony' in Morisette's Ironic are unfortunate rather than ironic.

Your example could be ironic if there was something specific to whatever it is that prompts ".... oh crap" that made it ironic in that particular case.

A worked example:

Alanis says:

# It's like a traffic jam when you're already late

# ....

# Isn't it ironic

The person who understands irony (and maybe has seen the routine by Irish comedian Ed Byrne) says:

"Sorry love, that's not ironic. What would be ironic is if you were stuck in a traffic jam, when you were already late, while on your way to a town meeting about chronic congestion problems on motorways and roads in the local environs, and you were the town planner in charge of roads and civil engineering."

Sarcasm (roughly) equals being sardonic - it involves stressing something in such a way that it implies to the listener that the opposite meaning is intended by the speaker.

//I have no idea how that dizzy bitch spells her name, apologies for any mistakes above

Nader asked for this in 1998

[SWroclawski]

Nader asked IBM to do this years ago: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=98/06/08/213122 7&tid=136 [slashdot.org]

Re:I kinda doubt it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it wonderful or is it crap? This is something that needs to be considered as well.

It was vastly superior to Windows 3.1, NT 3.x and Windows 95. It had a better UI than 3.1, and better stability than 95. I think however, that by the time windows 2000 came out, the level of investment in OS/2 wasn't very high, so Windows began to overtake it.

It's still more stable than Windows, but probably not quite as stable as Linux. It's easier to use than Linux (for most end users), but doesn't have the level of software or hardware support of either Linux or Windows.

Overall, it's a good client platform, and it's a shame to see it go.

Re:Is IBM is stupid?

[rabbit78]

Exactly. When I worked at MS, I have seen files in the Windows source tree that had comments saying they were part of OS/2.

Didn't you know that Windows NT is (kind-of) the successor to OS/2?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT [wikipedia.org]

Re:eComStation

[eltoyoboyo]

AC beat me to the punch. But glad anyway.

eComStation from Serenity Systems is an outgrowth of the Warp 4 client, mentioned in a previous slashdot "OS/2 is dying" article.

OS News Review of eComStation 1.0 [osnews.com] (lots of info and links about OS/2 history)

Re:Closed source abandonware = software death

[dryeo]

Remember the marketing
A better Dos then Dos
A better Windows then Windows
A better Linux then Linux

There are a lot of open source programs that run fine on OS/2 and most all others can be compiled for OS/2.
Its true that we only have GCC 3.3.5, and the libc is based on old FreeBSD 5.3 and we haven't moved to X.org yet, just old XFree86 ver 4.5.
And Odin needs to be resynced with the newest Wine.
No the main problem with OS/2 is the lack of developers.