Goodnight, OS/2...

[Holger Veit]

Cini, Richard wrote:

>OK, the inevitable Slashdot-type question...when will IBM open license OS/2
>(if at all)? There have been calls for this for years before IBM finally
>nailed the coffin shut.
>
I am afraid this won't happen. Even the recent kernels, and the 
application set as well, is still full of old
"compatibility" 16 bit code stemming from OS/2 1.x which was written by 
Microsoft. I have seen kernel
sources containing "Copyright (c) Microsoft 198x" in most 16 bit 
assembler files. Besides, compiling the
kernel is not a very simple issue because it requires certain versions 
of MASM, MSC 16 bit, MSC 32 bit,
and IIRC also some version of IBM C. Third party code also exists IIRC, 
the exeunpack code that the loader
uses to expand the packed LX format had been a binary-only library 
linked to the kernel. There are proprietary
tools to build the thunking library DOSCALL1 which are available in 
binary only as well.

It is truly amazing that the result from such a code base is still such 
a stable system.
Given the kernel is already such a mess, I do not really want to know 
what dead bodies are still
buried in the PM, WPS, and other subsystems. Let's say it this way: you 
probably wouldn't touch this
code even with a long pole unless it'd make your income.

But even if IBM has now - again - buried OS/2 (reminds me of those 
zombies which you could endlessly
put into a grave - they'll despite come up again and again), you could 
still buy the successor ecomstation which is
genuine OS/2 ander a different brand. This is promising, as not 
everything is lost, but as it shares the same above
codebase, it diminishes chances of an open source.

Regards
Holger