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There is a big difference between a spec from Microsoft which will be chock full of bugs (maybe on purpose) and a working, tested implementation. Did they get the spec for SMB as well as CIFS, or CIFS only?

There are a bunch of other secret MS technologies in OS/2 too. Remember, this was a joint venture between Microsoft and IBM, not an IBM only project. I worked on OS/2 full time and was a Microsoft employee.

MS is not going to want to open the code for the HPFS file system. Has the disk format for HPFS ever been made public? MS wrote HPFS.

Well, a working and tested implementation would be Samba. Jeremy has already described how they would treat the spec. They'll be checking everything out with formal regression tests to make sure the details of the spec actually work with real clients, and then make any changes within those real world constraints.

I'm not disagreeing with you that MS would be unlikely to OK the release of a FOSS OS/2. I'm just quibbling over that particular reason.

There are a number of things that I can think of off the top of my head that would excite me more than an open source release of OS/2, anyway.

It was a very advanced OS... for its day.

IBM doesn't want to Open Source OS/2 for several reasons. Microsoft not even being associated with those reasons. But, with their "commitment" to open source and their inability or desire to even work on this just makes me wonder how deep that commitment runs.

I didn't know you were a Microsoft employee at the time, but then again I was still in high school. I think this OS/2 thing should be put to rest as a legacy OS. Nice to run on your hardware or in a virtual machine if you can get it or need it, otherwise not really relevant.

I'm actually far more interested in your work on Xorg, particularly concerning Xegl. Will we ever see that completed or in some other way integrated into Xorg?