"In this anniversary, I'd like to shed some light about my first-hand experience with [OS/2], especially since I see many attempts at history re-writing and over-simplification, when people compress OS/2's two decades into a single paragraph. An OS/2 user named Roger Perkins wrote to OS/2 newsgroups ten years ago: "Here's to OS/2's 10th Anniversary on April 2nd! No OS has ever died so many times!"
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Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2005-12-13
I mean I like OS/2 and had Warp 4 Fix Pack 15 installed for a long long time, but I realize and acknowledge that IBM was never going to keep on supporting the OS for obvious reasons:
Competition from mainly Windows became too much to cope with since everyone wanted Windows for home use and nearly everyone wanted it for business, with the exception of some large banks and the likes, that couldn't trust its security with Microsoft until the days of NT4/W2K.
Reason. If you can hardly sell your product, even when in some places it is arguably superior to the above mentioned competition, there's not much to do for funding of a niche product like OS/2. Plus, the corporate changes within IBM focusing on providing services for 'anyone' that'd generate cash flow made OS/2 seem like a bad choice. Not in terms of technology, but in terms of the work needed to be done to support a declining user base.
History. IBM never had the same obvious problems with AIX and its past. It's never been 'in bed with the enemy' and as such can live on an IBM life forever, I think.
...And there's a bunch of other legitimate reasons for this butchering of a fine, fine OS...
But what puzzles me is why IBM would license OS/2 4.5 to Serenity Systems without handing over the code base as well... It seems that there's some access, but it can't be 100%, I'm sure...
Why not release it for serenity to take care of and then let Serenity figure out what would be needed to actually make this OS live in peace for years to come? I don't get it... And I don't necessarily think that open source is the answer, albeit I'd love to see bits and pieces emerging in new shapes and forms, like e.g. a modern implementation of the GUI, based on the original one, but with the updates required to make it a Gnome / KDE alternative 
Apart from that, though, I'd really have to say that it'd be interesting to see what OS/2 might have turned into, should the Taligent OS have had any real life!
A toast to object oriented greatness!!!
'OS/2 is dead!'
'-Long live OS/2!'
Member since:2005-12-28
I really don't think that MS own much of the code, especially after the big rewrite of 1999.
They do own the HPFS licenses, but OS/2 is not really dependant on that filesystem anymore.
But as ronaldst argues, IBM has been using the last 12 years on killing OS/2 (I recall something about reading that the decision was taken i 1994, that is before the release of OS/2 Warp 3 (Enterprise), that quickly was drawn from the market, handing over the game to Windows95 (Chicago), before it was even released) - why should they spend the ressources on cleaning up the sourcecode.
But, on the other hand - if they really want to erace OS/2 from the face of the earth, why did they even consider signing the OEM licencing agreemant with SSI - giving us eCS ?
Is it just the famous IBM greed or is there still an ongoing struggle for/against OS/2 ?
Member since:2005-07-12
I really don't think that MS own much of the code, especially after the big rewrite of 1999.
Probably true. However...
They do own the HPFS licenses, but OS/2 is not really dependant on that filesystem anymore.
Given that OS/2 can't boot from a JFS partition, I'm not sure I agree with your assessment. :-)
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Member since:
2005-10-23
I just wish IBM could release the source.
IBM does not own the source, big portions were written by Microsoft.