Should IBM's SOM/DSOM Be Open Sourced?

Esther Schindler sends a note about two journalists for very different publications (herself one of them) urging IBM to open-source, not all of OS/2 — they've consistently refused to do that — but instead one of its most powerful features: SOM, the System Object Model. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes at desktoplinux.com, "IBM, I'm told by developers who should know, still has all of SOM's source code and it all belongs to IBM. It's because IBM doesn't have all the code for OS/2 and some of it belongs to Microsoft that IBM open-sourcing OS/2 has proven to be a futile hope." And Esther Schindler takes the developer angle in a blog post at CIO.com: "Could the open-source community use a library packaging technology that enables languages to share class libraries regardless of the language an application was written in? I dare say it could, especially since the code to accomplish that goal was written (and shelved) more than ten years ago. All it takes to make that code available is to ask IBM to release SOM and DSOM as open-source." What are the business issues that would convince IBM to assent?

IBM Open-sourcing Experience

[fsckr]

IBM has been pretty good at taking sucessful closed source technologies and open sourcing them (think eclipse, webspere community ed, jikes and all the patents they've made available to the os community). I think IBM's genius has been in fostering communities to ensure that the technologies are well supported.

That said, SOM & DSOM are old tech from the dinosaur mainframe days. With so many distributed apps using more flexible interoperating technologies (SOAP, XMP-RPC etc) I don't really think open sourcing D/SOM will make that big of a difference to most new application developers.

Licensing and open source

[dryeo]

One of the advantages of SOM is that it allows a closed source environment to be extended. Don't like the file dialog, subclass it with a better one. Or a recent example, need transparent png bolted on your 10 year old OS, well create a few new classes and use Cairo to display them. Suddenly you have modern transparent icons, transparent widgets on the desktop etc.
Unluckily with GPL you can get into issues of whether closed source or just incompatible licensed libraries can be added. One of the ideas behind SOM/DSOM was that anyone could write a DLL and extend the WPS. Now it seems that in free software land you often have to worry about incompatible licenses.
If IBM ever does open source SOM/DSOM I hope it is with something liberal like the LGPL. Don't have to think about issues with linking and the important source stays open.

Re:Where's the 'notgonnahappen' tag?

[FooAtWFU]

I dunno. IBM isn't really in the OS market anymore, at least, not the regular mass-produced OS market - the big-machine Z/OS UNIX mainframe stuff and the like is an entirely different matter altogether (and probably wouldn't be substantially affected by such an offering anyway). Giving something like this to Linux+friends, if it helped, could boost Linux and be seriously annoying to Microsoft. And IBM likes Linux - certainly a lot more than they like Microsoft. It could happen. Maybe.

Re:Its already there

[sigzero]

You have no clue. They are not in the same class at all.

Open Source should be the default "archive" choice

[TakeyMcTaker]

Ignore IBM and OS/2 and everything, just for a second, and review this hypothetical situation on its own:

A Big Computer Giant (BCG) purports to be very Open Source friendly. They defend OSS products and licenses, even using their own lawyers, and make a lot of money using/supporting OSS, in their own hardware, and in huge consulting contracts. It turns out they have this collection of source code that they aren't really using anymore, and they have complete rights to at least part of it. Let's just say they only have 2 real options when archiving the source code they own the rights to:

1. Keep it locked in some internal media or shelf, never to see the light of day, unless an internal developer finds it interesting and digs it up for an internal-only project. The internal project may never see the light of day either.

2. Put it on the Internet, and Open Source License it, preferably with an existing OSI license. Not only could the online repository be considered the source "archive", but it also leaves the possibility of growing a redundant, living archive. The source could then be provided by various OSS repositories and mirror hosts.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but shouldn't #2 always be the default, or at least the first option considered? Even if you're not an OSS nut (like me), you have to admit the hypothetical company looks pretty darn hypocritical if they don't choose #2, when given the choice, early and often.

So am I using a hypothetical situation to say that IBM (BCG) is a big hypocrite if they DON'T release and apply an OSI License to SOM/DSOM source, ASAP? Why yes I am! How could you tell?...

Re:Of Course!

[Idiot with a gun]

What colour is the sky in your world?

Why, I can easily recompile the sky to be whatever color I want it to be, now that you mention it.

Re:Open Source should be the default "archive" cho

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not hypocritical because they didn't tell other people that they must open source everything. Also, you are somewhat familiar with the logistics involved by projects, archives, etc. You might consider that open sourcing is far from a 'default' choice, there are plenty of considerations:

1. it takes time to look over something to make it ready to see the light of day. You have a reputation to uphold.
2. you might want to make money off the software, now or in the future. as much as i love and support and contribute to open source, there's nothing wrong with that.
3. thanks to certain lawsuits, there is some perception in the industry that open source is risky. someone might sue you because you use linux. So, it takes work (lawyer time) to make sure code is clean
4. open source needs a community to really thrive. interested contributors, maintainers, etc. you would really like to see it 'picked up' by someone if it is going to be thrown over the wall
5. i don't think the safety of archiving is a major concern. probably more true for small companies that are not as likely to be around for the long term

demanding (not asking) that something on someone else's shelf be released is not really going to give co's a warm feeling about putting anything out there. you might reconsider your statement in terms of damage it could cause to open source...

just some things to consider.

Re:Open Source should be the default "archive" cho

[sw155kn1f3]

Because in real world companies exist to make money, not please OSS crowd.

just leave them alone

[Bizzeh]

did any of you write os/2? no... did any of you pay for os/2's development? no... so who do any of you think you are to demand the release of its source?
rather than demanding source code for closed applications, go outside, and realise there is a real world where people couldnt care less about things like this. there are more important things than wether something that has been long since dead is forced to be open source or not. just let it go.

Re:Who needs the code?

[LLKrisJ]

Sadly no - on all counts. In over a decade and a half, no one (but maybe Apple) came close. DSOM/SOM hasn't been worked on in many years, and still, with kludge after kludge, MS cant come close. (some of) The Linux community wanted the WPS open sourced just because of how powerful it was - even though I dont think they even realized that it meant also open sourcing SOM/DSOM. With many attempts at numerous windowing environments, though the Linux community has made both some pretty and some pretty useful windowing environments, they still haven't come close...

I use this quote but to me, one thing stands out in reading nearly all posts in this thread;

SOM/DSOM was apparently a very powerful system with some advantages which supposedly make it a desirable tool to have within the Linux environment.

Apparently _nobody_ (this is important) has been able to recreate anything even remotely like it independently from IBM. So _nobody_ succeeded in doing this and yet everybody seems to be very happy to just take some cheap shots at MS for creating their 'kludge' COM+ attempts.

I can't help but feel that that's just stupid. At least they have tried to do something, even if their solution has shortcomings.

People should stop with this whole MS = evil, Linux = good crap. Software platforms should be rated on merit and unless the Linux community comes up with a good solution in this particular case the should probably turn it down a notch or two with their criticisms already..

Re:Who needs the code?

[cyber-vandal]

The trouble with being a habitual criminal is that no-one trusts you ever again. That's where MS = evil comes from and is not likely to stop until they show a consistent period of obeying the law and playing within the rules. Since that is antithetical to the MS corporate culture MS = evil will continue to be held as an opinion irrespective of whether WinXP isn't as god-awful as Win98.