Linked by Michael Reed on Thu 7th Feb 2008 17:21 UTC
Last month, IBM made an announcement that put an end to any hope of an open source OS/2. Responding to requests from an online community that had previously collected 11,600 signatures in support of its cause, the company confirmed that they would not be releasing the source code of their OS/2 operating system. I used OS/2 as my main operating system for about four years, and unlike some former users, my reaction to the news sits somewhere between disinterest and relief.
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RE: OS/2, AmigaOS and others
by umccullough on Thu 7th Feb 2008 21:14
in reply to "OS/2, AmigaOS and others"
Member since:2006-01-26
BeOS will soon live again as Haiku, it has so far taken about 10 years to reach the point that people can see it as a possible replacement OS.
Actually, less than 7 years so far...
Another worth mentioning could be ReactOS - instead of begging Microsoft to open-source older versions of Windows, it seems far more reasonable to put your efforts behind ReactOS instead.
RE[2]: OS/2, AmigaOS and others
by mmu_man on Fri 8th Feb 2008 00:32
in reply to "RE: OS/2, AmigaOS and others"
Member since:2006-09-30
RE[2]: OS/2, AmigaOS and others
by Earl Colby pottinger on Fri 8th Feb 2008 18:51
in reply to "RE: OS/2, AmigaOS and others"
Member since:2005-07-06
RE: OS/2, AmigaOS and others
by rcsteiner on Thu 7th Feb 2008 21:19
in reply to "OS/2, AmigaOS and others"
Member since:2005-07-12
"What I don't understand is why no-one has tried to just reproduce a clean room version of their favorite OS instead of demanding the owners of the original code to open source?"
Possible reasons:
(1) IBM was supporting the OS with bug fixes and with slipstreamed new features (JFS, LVM, USB support, etc) all the way through December 2006, which wasn't all that long ago, so the OS isn't quite as "far behind" as some people might think. That includes a number of unofficial kernel updates from sources within IBM (many thanks SG!).
(2) In addition, companies like Serenity Systems and Scitech have been adding fairly substantial improvements to the installation code and to the video cards actively supported, for example, which greatly increased the lifespan of the existing client.
That said, the Voyager Project has been doing what you suggest for a while now.
http://voyager.netlabs.org/en/site/index.xml
Edited 2008-02-07 21:23 UTC
RE: OS/2, AmigaOS and others
by fithisux on Thu 7th Feb 2008 21:54
in reply to "OS/2, AmigaOS and others"
Member since:2006-01-22
RE[2]: OS/2, AmigaOS and others
by Earl Colby pottinger on Fri 8th Feb 2008 18:48
in reply to "RE: OS/2, AmigaOS and others"
Member since:2005-07-06
I am not clear what you are trying to say. At this moment I am working to write a number of Open Sourced Apps for Haiku.
My question is where are the other open source replacement projects for older retired OSs that should be mature by now?
However, the point that OS/2 has had a large number of updates right up to 2006 was something I was not aware of. It goes a long way in explaining the problem as that would make OS/2 a moving target.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
What I don't understand is why no-one has tried to just reproduce a clean room version of their favorite OS instead of demanding the owners of the original code to open source?
BeOS will soon live again as Haiku, it has so far taken about 10 years to reach the point that people can see it as a possible replacement OS.
OS/2, AmigaOS and others 'retired' OSs that have fans are still older than BeOS, had far larger fan bases at the time of retirement and in some ways simpler code bases to reproduce. Most of these OSs could have already been recreated by now if their fans had spent their time coding instead of demanding the original code base to be opened up.