Thinkpads Forum

IBM's Cost To Open Source OS/2 And OS/2 Warp

According to IBM Deutchland, "there are about 300 third party code-pieces in OS/2, where the legal situation would have to be clarified. Some of those "contributors" do no longer exist, sold their names (with or without assets) and many more things. It actually has been looked at and an estimate of around 500k$ to handle all above activities were estimates - beside the time IBM attorneys would have to spent."

http://www2.warptech.info:81/forum/view ... mblock=yes

Best,
RadarCat, WebMaster
http://www.os2warplinks.com

If one compares the cost to open source to the cost of continueing to develope it, which one would cost less?

Another choice to open sourceing OS/2 is to allow Serenity Systems access to the source code? SS could agree that only employess of SS would be given access to the code? SS could have some 'low paid' programmers that - in a way - work for SS (a small group of OS/2 programmers either 'working for SS' or 'subcontracted to SS'?)?

Just thinking out loud.

The one real issue with open sourcing OS/2 is that not all portions of OS/2 is owned by IBM. There are significant portions of the code that is owned by Microsoft which does not allow IBM to open source the product.

(Very belated reply.)

One point that seems not to be widely known is that the DOS box in OS/2 was written entirely at Microsoft. That's a fairly essential part of the system, and IBM certainly can't legally open-source it.

What's annoying about this is that DOS box in OS/2 was the best DOS environment ever made, I believe.

One could use the open source FreeDOS to replace the DOS Box by Microsoft?

There is a project to clone OS/2 called OSFree at http://www.osfree.org where they are using the L4 kernel as the basis.

Perhaps one could compile the ReactOS source code in OS/2-eCS and create an alternative to OS/2? http://www.reactos.org .

OS/2 will never be open sourced. A lot of the code is not exclusive to IBM so getting permission from all the various places would be nigh impossible. I dont know why people continue to discuss this. It will never happen.

Have you checked out OSFree?
http://www.osfree.org

I used to be a HUGE OS/2 buff, back in the day. Even got into the beta program for Warp 4/'Merlin'. Ahh, those were the days. Heck, I *still* use DeScribe 5.0.6 on Windows. It's still a really nice piece of code, even today.

However, despite all of this, I couldn't care less about open-sourcing the whole of OS/2. The kernel design is archaic, the networking code never really worked that well, and Presentation Manager itself is also really outdated (DIVE hasn't kept up with DirectX).

There's only ONE component of OS/2 that I would **REALLY** like to see released, and it is one that I can't imagine has many (if any at all) third-party intellectual property ties: Workplace Shell.

PLEASE, IBM, open-source WPS and its SOM implementation!

-- Nathan

I use eComStation - http://www.ecomstation.com - from Serenity Systems - http://www.serenitysystems.com . It is an updated version of OS/2 Warp. I have no problems with networking. I have a wif router that I manage from an eCS computer. I will be updating eCS from 1.1 to 1.2r. You should devfinitely try eCS. I run it on my desktop computer and two notebook computers (both Thinkpads).

There are two efforts that are trying to create a replacement for OS/2-eCS. They have a way to go but eCS will still be around for quite a while.
http://voyager.netlabs.org http://www.osfree.org

Imagine they'd open source OS/2 and it would have success - what a shame for big-blue management...

I wonder if it would be easier to open source OS/2 for PowerPC?

Not much 3rd party code in it, technically more interesting than the x86 code (more modern) but...
...as i mentioned above, i guess that IBM has absolutely no interest in a free OS/2, either it's a successor (and they will be asked why they droped it) or it's a looser (and it's still IBMs name connected with it)

There will be another petition to open source OS/2 by <a href="http://www.os2world.com">OS/2 World</a> . It would be nice if they did a petition for OS/2 for PowerPC.