6 ms·

There have been many requests to make it opensource, but apparently this was not possible because some part of the code are owned by both IBM and Microsoft who

by giamma 4y ago

There have been many requests to make it opensource, but apparently this was not possible because some part of the code are owned by both IBM and Microsoft who collaborated on OS/2 at the beginning before Microsoft decided to build its own Windows. Rumors are that while IBM was positive about open sourcing OS/2, Microsoft did not give consent. I have been an OS/2 user back in the days, the system was great at that time, much better than the Windows counterpart, with a great UI and file system (which for example did not need defrag). It was however affected by one major issue: at the UI level it had a single event queue (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n5/queue.html http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n5/queue.html) and if some application would hang while processing its events, it would freeze the UI for good.

ch_123 4y ago
Fun fact: Arca Noae doesn't even have access to the source code for OS/2. All enhancements to the core OS are implemented as drivers or binary patches.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mdaniel 4y ago
  That's amazing; do you have a citation for that? Also, how does that work given their $129 price tag? I have to separately buy a license to OS/2 and then their software modifies the distributed binaries?
  - ch_123 4y ago
    This was discussed in an interview between Bryan Lunduke and the founder of Arca Noae which is sadly no longer online. No - when you buy a copy of ArcaOS you get an OS/2 license. Arca Noae have an agreement with IBM to resell OS/2 licenses, they just don't have access to the source code.
mschaef 4y ago
> some part of the code are owned by both IBM and Microsoft who collaborated on OS/2 at the beginning before Microsoft decided to build its own Windows. Rumors are that while IBM was positive about open sourcing OS/2, Microsoft did not give consent. This is very easy to believe. In Summer of '95, I interned at a tester for a group in IBM Austin that was developing a product called OS/2 Lan Server Enterprise. This was a version of Lan Server where all the underpinnings were to be replaced with the DCE product they were developing concurrently. (So we'd write scripts to do things like create a user with an LS command and verify that the user was created with a DCE command.) One of the other concurrent goals at the time was to remove Microsoft code from OS/2. Developers on the team were classified into those who had seen Microsoft code and those who had not. Even seeing the MS code was immediate disqualification from writing anything new, and this was actively enforced. > I have been an OS/2 user back in the days, the system was great at that time, I'd always wanted to be excited about OS/2, and the IBM job was about as close as I got. My day to day PC at the job was an ancient (1988-era) PS/2 Model 80, and it ran even the current versions of OS/2 surprisingly well. Aside from IBM's odd marketing ("Get Warped" ?!?!?), Microsoft did a better job meeting customers where they were... both Windows 3 and Windows 95 are great examples of this. OS/2 was technically better, but never quite aligned with the market. (The first release of OS/2 cost about triple what DOS did, had significantly higher system requirements, and needed specific software to enable the new functionality... which did not initially include a GUI. It was a very difficult sell. It might have gone differently if Microsoft had been able to convince IBM to require a 386... but OS/2 was part of the PS/2 strategy, and only the highest end of the four PS/2's had a 386.)
- giamma 4y ago
  > One of the other concurrent goals at the time was to remove Microsoft code from OS/2. Developers on the team were classified into those who had seen Microsoft code and those who had not. Even seeing the MS code was immediate disqualification from writing anything new, and this was actively enforced. IBM has always been super cautious about intellectual property. I am an opensource committer at Eclipse Foundation (which was created by IBM) and there is a strict IP review process. A copy/paste from stackoverflow is not allowed. > I'd always wanted to be excited about OS/2, and the IBM job was about as close as I got. My day to day PC at the job was an ancient (1988-era) PS/2 Model 80, and it ran even the current versions of OS/2 surprisingly well. I started using OS/2 Warp on a 486 66Mhz with 4GM RAM, it was running pretty smooth for me.

by giamma 4y ago

ch_123 4y ago

Fun fact: Arca Noae doesn't even have access to the source code for OS/2. All enhancements to the core OS are implemented as drivers or binary patches.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mdaniel 4y ago
That's amazing; do you have a citation for that? Also, how does that work given their $129 price tag? I have to separately buy a license to OS/2 and then their software modifies the distributed binaries?
- ch_123 4y ago
  This was discussed in an interview between Bryan Lunduke and the founder of Arca Noae which is sadly no longer online. No - when you buy a copy of ArcaOS you get an OS/2 license. Arca Noae have an agreement with IBM to resell OS/2 licenses, they just don't have access to the source code.

mschaef 4y ago

> some part of the code are owned by both IBM and Microsoft who collaborated on OS/2 at the beginning before Microsoft decided to build its own Windows. Rumors are that while IBM was positive about open sourcing OS/2, Microsoft did not give consent. This is very easy to believe. In Summer of '95, I interned at a tester for a group in IBM Austin that was developing a product called OS/2 Lan Server Enterprise. This was a version of Lan Server where all the underpinnings were to be replaced with the DCE product they were developing concurrently. (So we'd write scripts to do things like create a user with an LS command and verify that the user was created with a DCE command.) One of the other concurrent goals at the time was to remove Microsoft code from OS/2. Developers on the team were classified into those who had seen Microsoft code and those who had not. Even seeing the MS code was immediate disqualification from writing anything new, and this was actively enforced. > I have been an OS/2 user back in the days, the system was great at that time, I'd always wanted to be excited about OS/2, and the IBM job was about as close as I got. My day to day PC at the job was an ancient (1988-era) PS/2 Model 80, and it ran even the current versions of OS/2 surprisingly well. Aside from IBM's odd marketing ("Get Warped" ?!?!?), Microsoft did a better job meeting customers where they were... both Windows 3 and Windows 95 are great examples of this. OS/2 was technically better, but never quite aligned with the market. (The first release of OS/2 cost about triple what DOS did, had significantly higher system requirements, and needed specific software to enable the new functionality... which did not initially include a GUI. It was a very difficult sell. It might have gone differently if Microsoft had been able to convince IBM to require a 386... but OS/2 was part of the PS/2 strategy, and only the highest end of the four PS/2's had a 386.)

giamma 4y ago
> One of the other concurrent goals at the time was to remove Microsoft code from OS/2. Developers on the team were classified into those who had seen Microsoft code and those who had not. Even seeing the MS code was immediate disqualification from writing anything new, and this was actively enforced. IBM has always been super cautious about intellectual property. I am an opensource committer at Eclipse Foundation (which was created by IBM) and there is a strict IP review process. A copy/paste from stackoverflow is not allowed. > I'd always wanted to be excited about OS/2, and the IBM job was about as close as I got. My day to day PC at the job was an ancient (1988-era) PS/2 Model 80, and it ran even the current versions of OS/2 surprisingly well. I started using OS/2 Warp on a 486 66Mhz with 4GM RAM, it was running pretty smooth for me.