Petition To Get OS/2 Open Source 503
Landreth writes "There is currently an ongoing petition taking place at OS2 World to get IBM to open source either the whole part or parts of OS/2 to the community. I would highly encourage the Linux community to take part of this open source petition as well due to the fact there are lots of interesting code base the they could benefit from. To sign the petition: http://www.os2world.com/petition/" Despite the jokes about it, there was some good stuff in OS/2; however, I'd rank the ability to open it up fairly low, since I suspect there's a fair amount of legal restrictions on elements of the code.
Re:vms (Score:3, Informative)
It's a shame (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, I signed, but I'm afraid that 1) there's too much proprietary licensed code for the entire thing to be released, and 2) IBM has neither the patience nor the interest in doing the work necessary to separate what can be released from what can't be released. Which is a pity.
Re:MS Code? (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite.
OS/2 3.0 NT was supposed to be built from NT's codebase. Obviously, that didn't happen, and microsoft took their toys and went home and made Windows 3.1 NT.
There is significant evidence that NT 3.1 (and later) Windows 32-bit APIs were influenced by OS/2 's design. The WinScrollWindow api under OS/2 has exactly the same signature as ScrollWindowEx under Win32... The win16 api does not quite match. There are a large number of these close matches in the Win32 API
That being said, NT (and its derivatives) do not share code with OS/2 in implementation. (other than code that was inherited from OS/2 1.3 (ie: HPFS).
Re:MS Code? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:vms (Score:3, Informative)
It'll never happen (Score:5, Informative)
IBM sold OS/2 off and it became eComStation ("jointly developed" - whatever). I highly doubt big blue has exclusive rights to the code anymore.
Go ahead and sign the petition, we all know how much weight internet petitions [petitionspot.com] carry.
I, for one, would love to see both of these pan out. Unfortunately they probably won't.
Re:vms (Score:2, Informative)
see http://www.answers.com/topic/dave-cutler
Details of current OS/2 company (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.ecomstation.com/
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OS/2 Ahh the memories (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, if the OS/2 kernel code is too encumbered, even releasing the WPS alone could be a great thing. While it certainly lacked some features which modern desktops have, it had some other features which AFAIK are still not available on other systems (e.g. what was called "Arbeitsordner" in the German version; essentially a folder which managed its own "sub-session").
Re:Dare to dream! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Workplace Shell (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps some of OS/2 (Score:5, Informative)
There's also still a lot of Microsoft bits and pieces of code in there.
-Aaron
Re:got it all (Score:1, Informative)
There is a project underway [osfree.org] to create an open-source OS/2 clone, and those guys could possibly use things like compilers, redbooks, manuals, API specs, or even applications (for testing, maybe).
Re:I'm In (293) - Many More Needed. (Score:5, Informative)
No, that means you can't compile GPLed code with CPLed code and distribute the resulting binary.
Repeat after me: copyright affects distribution, not use.
Jeremy
Re:Windows DLL Code (Score:3, Informative)
The ability to run Windows in OS/2 was called DOS. And it was a better DOS than Microsofts DOS. Photoshop ran faster in WinOS2 then it did on native DOS/Windows. Anyways, Windows run in this virtual DOS and IBM even sold a version of OS/2( codename Ferengi ) which let you install your Microsoft version of Windows 3.1 into the OS/2 DOS virtual machine. They did this because IBM had to pay Microsoft a large amount for every version of OS/2 sold with the WinOS2 system pre-installed.
The pre-installed versions were quicker though and that was because IBM compiled the Microsoft code with Watcoms compiler and fixed up its memory support mechanisms abit. Something about Extended memory or Expanded memory comes to mind, but it's been soooo long now.
LoB
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:MSFT will say no (Score:3, Informative)
Ah yes, thats why we (was working at IBM, doing OS/2 support and some development) got told that marketing effords aimed at the consumer were to be stopped inmediately, the day before WIndows 95 became generally available..
No, they didn't try as hard as they could, they gave up before even having tried.
Re:MSFT will say no (Score:2, Informative)
E:\OS2>bldlevel hpfs.ifs
Build Level Display Facility Version 6.10.480 Oct 6 2000
(C) Copyright IBM Corporation 1993-2000
Signature: @#IBM:14.083#@ HPFS Installable File System for OS/2
Vendor: IBM
Revision: 14.83
File Version: 14.83
Description: HPFS Installable File System for OS/2
The story I heard was that when IBM and Microsoft decided to build the next generation HD filesystem they agreed on the specs then each went of wrote their own file system. Then they sat down and compared them. Microsofts was much faster so they used that.
Then it turned out that MS broke the specs, namely it was sopposed to be written in C and run on a 286. IBM then had to rewrite HPFS.
HPFS is 16 bit and is limited to a 2 MB cache
HPFS386 had no memory limit (besides OS limits) for cache and was much faster. MS still licenses HPFS386 for about $1000 a license.
IBM eventually ported JFS to OS/2 to get around the need for HPFS386 on Warp Server. HPFS386 supports ACLs unlike HPFS