IBM Won't Open-Source OS/2 394
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."
IBM won't? IBM CAN'T! (Score:4, Informative)
No news here people. Only common sense needed.
eComStation (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Windows NT (Score:3, Informative)
No big loss (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bets anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
IBM themselves have finally moved on, though. Their hardware management consoles still used OS/2 until a few years ago, but they're all Linux now.
sold (Score:1, Informative)
Re:OS/2 Bled to Death (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, Linux is older than Windows 95.
Re:IBM vs. Sun? (Score:5, Informative)
IBM would have to do a lot more core-level rewriting than Sun did, because the core stuff is all Microsoft, and Microsoft isn't going to give it up. It's a lot more work for something people have a lot less interest in.
Re:Windows NT (Score:5, Informative)
I can also run OS/2 v1.x text mode binaries under 2k even cmd.exe.
NT did start as a rewrite of OS/2 and the first version that booted up was OS/2 NT ver 3.
One thing MS did get in the divorce was rights to use version 3 and up which is why OS/2 4.5 is actually ver 2.45 eg
F:\usr\bin>uname -a
OS/2 amad.localdomain 2 2.45 i386
Re:IBM vs. Sun? (Score:5, Informative)
If they don't have the copyright to it, they may not be able to.
Re:IBM vs. Sun? (Score:5, Informative)
If you think OS/2 2.0 and later were at all like Win 3.1, you simply weren't paying attention.
Perhaps you're remembering Windows NT 3.1 instead?
Re:VMware - abstract it (Score:3, Informative)
Xen 3.1 or newer on SVM-capable AMD hardware will also run OS/2 up to this Fixpack-level. The final fix needed to enable running the latest Fixpack levels and hopefully eComStation as well will be in Very Soon Now.
Re:IBM vs. Sun? (Score:4, Informative)
I'll reply to you because you have the most reasonable of all the replies.
Repeating myself for the upteenth time:
I'm not objecting to IBM not wanting to open source OS/2. It'd be nice if they did but they have their reasons for not doing so that they've chosen to keep private. It could be things as simple as the not wanting to harm Serenity Systems, not wanting to cannibalize or confuse part of their linux market or not wanting to devote even minimal engineering effort to it.
I'm objecting to all the content-free mod'ed up comments saying, with no evidence at all, that IBM can't open source it for legal reasons. This is nonsense.
It all depends on the particular constituent licenses and copyright assignments. This is no different from on-selling. For pretty much any use of software, including open sourcing it, on-selling or feeding it to your dog, you have to check the constituent licenses and copyright assignments. Hand waving about how "open sourcing is impossible" is nonsense. It depends on the particular constituent licenses and copyright assignments. I really don't know how to make it any clearer.
There's way too many people on /. who think that open source licenses are legally mystically different from the myriad of commercial licenses out there. They're not.
Due to incessant marketing and branding there's also way too many people who think that a branded software package is an indivisible software blob that can't be split and merged as needed. Despite propaganda to the contrary, licenses both closed and open source are not viral and there's nothing legally stopping IBM open sourcing the majority of OS/2 that it does own outright, regardless of what the licenses and copyright assignments of the associated subsystems not developed by IBM are. Interested people/companies could then create the missing subsystems or adapt them from Linux/BSD.
The same is true for all companies that claim their software can't be open sourced for legal reasons. Nonsense. If they own it they can open source it. Any dependencies on restrictively licensed subroutine libraries can be re-engineered. It's all just legal FUD to blindside objections and cover up the possibly embarrassing real reasons.
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Integrated software = marketing buzzword for "we own all the pieces" = we own you.
WPS on Linux (Score:3, Informative)