Petition To Get OS/2 Open Source

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.

The instant the source is released

[mferrier]

... you know IBM is going to have ten more lawsuits on their hands as various software copyright holders magically find bits of "their code" in the OS/2 source.

OS/2 Ahh the memories

[big-giant-head]

I used in the early ninties, for it's day it was very nice. I think a Opensourced OS/2 would be a good alternative to Linux/BSD, for some folks who want a more gui driven system.... It never hurts to have options.

vms

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need, is VMS open sourced. OS/2 might be interesting, but VMS would be useful. There's a difference. VMS has one of the best multitasking systems that's ever seen the light of day - a scheduler that works exceedingly well, and a VM system that blows everything on the market today out of the water.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

MS-Win Integration Code Off-Limits?

[EricTheGreen]

IIRC, OS/2 (at least Warp) shipped with a complete install of MS-Win to provide dual-OS support. The OS/2 code contained lots of integration points--if these integration points relied on Win code provided as part of the infamous "divorce decree", that would presumably be off-limits without MS's blessing. If so, would there be enough "untainted" OS/2 code left to be useful as open source?

I didn't use later versions of OS/2, so I don't know if this chimera-like architecture was changed further on...

I always liked OS/2

[MythoBeast]

I honestly think that OS/2 would have made a much greater impact if it hadn't had such pathetic PR support. The OS itself was a surprsingly strong and reliable system, but their ad campaigns were mind-bogglingly pathetic.

I'm not sure what the Linux community could gain by it being open source, except maybe some more efficient/reliable algorythms. As such, it would be enough for the IBM written chunks to be open sourced - they don't need a complete, functional code base.

Not going to happen for a long, LONG time...

[Zab UvWxy]

Why, you may ask?

There are still a number of financial institutions around the world that run on various versions of OS/2, both at the server and workstation level.

Also, as of about 5 years ago, CLI OS/2 powered approximately 85% of North America's Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), with a significant share worldwide as well.

I'm sure most of the companies still behind OS/2 are screaming at IBM not to release so much as a comment from the code.

learning...

[ecalkin]

exposure to other 'stuff' helps expand your horizons. being able to see the code behind os/2 would probably give a different perspective on an operating system.
there is something to be said for learning from others.

eric

Not this again!

[LordNimon]

What a joke. Some people have been trying to get OS/2 open-sourced for years. Of course, none of these people is a large IBM customer. Instead, they've always just been a bunch of disgruntled end-users. Looking at this petition, I see that nothing has changed. This petition is no different than any of the dozens before it over the past 10 years.

There is no way this is going to happen. IBM would have nothing to gain, because they'd have to hire a whole of people to go through the code, figure out what's not protected by any IP (and OS/2 has a 20-year history, so that's a lot of possibile IP), and then release it in such a way as to make sure no one notices, since the last thing IBM wants these days is to bring attention to OS/2.

Re:Workplace Shell

[markhb]

I agree; SOM (the System Object Model) and the WPS are really the only pieces that would hold any interest. The OS/2 kernel was an advancement over DOS, but IBM never took it further than that (and it was still designed as a single-user PC OS, albeit with hooks for external security apps).

That having been said, I think that regardless of the legal entanglements, open-sourcing any part of their fat client OS would be in direct opposition to their "eCommerce Platform" strategy (i.e., run everything as thin clients off of Websphere), and so I agree with Hemos' prediction that this is not going to be more than a "wouldn't it be nice" for the foreseeable future.

Write a letter or make a call ...

[Sonic McTails]

Writing a letter or calling IBM would be worth like 1,000 to 10,000 signatures because it tells people that you really want this, and you aren't just filling out the form many hundreds of times. If you really want to see it happen call IBM: 1-800-IBM-4YOU

Re:MSFT will say no

[BrookHarty]

Exactly, you can run Windows 16bit and (Win32) software on OS/2. I doubt microsoft will allow that code to be GPL'ed.

I rathed liked OS/2, stable and had the best VGA Font I used. Ya, die hard terminal user. :P

Re:I'm In (293) - Many More Needed.

[pavon]

Further, history shows that IBM is likely to use a GNU compatible license if they open the source at all.

Sort of. When they release code added to an existing project, it is released under that projects licence. But most of the code that they have released on their own is under the Common Public License (previously IBM Public License). The CPL is a very nice license, simular to the LGPL in what rights it gives to the user, and the FSF has no philosophical objections with it. However it is not compatable with the GPL for technical legal reasons. That means that you cannot compile GPL(or LGPL) code and CPL code together, although you can link CPL code against LGPL.

I also agree that it would be very difficult to open source OS/2 because of cross licensing. Just one example - OS/2 is posix compliant. I would be very suprised if IBM did not have some license agreement with the holders of the SVR4 when making the posix layer. Also because they were not planning on releasing the code, they may not have kept track of every location of licensed code. This could become a bigger nightmare then the SCO lawsuit if they tried to open it up.

Re:Not going to happen for a long, LONG time...

[Martin Blank]

ATMs are being replaced rapidly with newer models running Windows code. A lot of the color-screen units being installed now run Windows. I doubt that the market share is quite that high.

Besides, your ATM network is protected by strong ACLs and firewalls, right? Right?

Re:OS/2 Ahh the memories

[MightyMartian]

Well, as far as I'm concerned, the Windows GUI to this very day is a half-witted knock-off of OS/2's WPS. I'm not going to get into a war over whether MacOS's GUI is better than the old WPS, but it's pretty damn sad that Windows XP, when you look at it, has an inferior GUI to one developed a decade ago.

Patents would be much better than code

[LodCrappo]

The actual code used in OS/2 is probably very tied to being part of an OS/2 system, not Linux or your open source os of choice. Porting an OS isn't like porting an app and translating some library calls..

Except maybe for some of the very high level code (basically applications), you aren't just going to port some feature of OS/2 to *nix even if you have the code.

What would be nice would be a release of patents/copyrights covering concepts and technologies used in OS/2, such as the System Object Model concepts and the Workplace Shell. OS/2 had some nice ideas and it was a neat environment to work in. Bringing that environment to open source (or any other environment) would not be that much easier even if you had the source.

Re:MSFT will say no

[DrXym]

With that said, anything from red books to technical documentation would be useful. Even header files. Or the CSet++ / VisualAge classes. Aside from SOM / WPS, OS/2 is like a primitive NT (flame proof clothes on but it's true) - it has limited plug and play, limited registry, limited games support (DIVE), less APIs, it's not a moving target and its API very closely resembles Win16 / Win32.

Someone could produce something akin to WINE but for OS2/ apps. What use would this be? I have no idea, but I suppose there might be a lot of file servers, EPOS & banking code out there written to OS/2. It might be a big win to someone if that could be moved over to Linux.

Re:Workplace Shell

[MightyMartian]

WPS did have a major flaw of its own, and that was the single message queue. Some ill-behaved apps could lock it up.

Re:Not going to happen for a long, LONG time...

[sremick]

ATMs are being replaced rapidly with newer models running Windows code. A lot of the color-screen units being installed now run Windows

Yep, those would be all the ones with the BSODs.

And I'm not just being a random MS-basher here. The number of ATMs, flight-info displays, and price-check terminals with BSODs these days is staggering. For all you MS-apologists out there: when was the last time you saw an ATM with an error that wasn't an Window error?

Re:MSFT will say no

[John Hasler]

> That and Microsoft did whatever they could,
> legal or otherwise, to kill OS/2

So did IBM.

beyond irrelevant

[markhahn]

good old os/2 - so few people remember that Microsoft wrote it, basically under contract, for IBM.

but really, who would care? it was an OS of its time (around 1990), and certainly does not add value to the OS landscape today. if you want layering to interfere with the design of an OS, you need look no further than NT and followons. the rest of the universe has gone on (to linux).

yes, I did work on OS/2 (in Redmond long ago). I even have the tshirts to prove it (including one that elucidates that NT=new technology, and was originally a derivative of OS/2 for RISC chips...)

Maybe, but a lot of OS/2 key tech is MS-free.

[Richard Steiner]

I think the DOSEMU and DOSBOX projects could derive some serious benefit from OS/2's MVDM technology, for example, and there are a number of concepts in the OS/2 WorkPlace Shell which might be encumbered by NeXT licensing or something but not MS, and which both KDE and GNOME could benefit from.

Re:MSFT will say no

[DavidTC]

When IBM had M$ write OS/2, IBM paid to have all of the rights to the code so that M$ couldn't sell OS/2 to other manufacturer's.

This, incidently, is why MS jumped ship on OS/2.

IBM had been burned by DOS, where they basically paid the R&D for their competitors, because they never thought there would be a market for PC clones and thus assumed that DOS was going to be basically theirs. (Well, I guess they figured MS might port it to other platforms, but that threat seemed limited.)

When, suddenly, not only are people competing with them, but the people they got their OS from were selling exactly the same OS to those people! Which seems like something reasonable now, but it was a completely new concept at that time. (It didn't help that personal computers weren't taken seriously at all by IBM at this point.)

I doubt this was delibrately, BTW. MS couldn't have predicted the clone market either.

So the next time, they paid MS to make an OS for them, and solely them. Although they would be happy to license it competitors for a 'reasonable' cost.

And, again, MS shafted them, delibrately this time, in a completely different way, with Windows.