OS/2 Community Tries Bounty System 293
Grayskull writes "The OS/2 and eComStation community are trying to get open source software ported to that platform by opening bounties and allowing people to chip in with prize money. Currently the most important open bounties are Java 6 port, Icon routines in OS/2, VirtualBox port, Extend multimedia and OpenWengo ports."
Or... (Score:1, Interesting)
You could just use an OS that people are actually still developing for.
Re:Wtf (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Team OS/2! (Score:4, Interesting)
Ahh show some respect. :)
Long before there was talk of Linux supplanting Windows, it was OS/2.
I was one of them, from version 2 through Warp 4. Let the Star Trek puns rain down on me for that one! :)
Take care all.
Just my .02 worth :)
What does OS/2 offer today? (Score:4, Interesting)
I used OS/2 Warp a long time ago. It was good, in its day. But why do people still use it late 2008?
Is it love?
Are there any technical advantages?
If it is because of a key legacy application instead of getting stuff ported to OS/2 maybe that application should get ported to the other OSs?
Not the whole OS, but large subsystems can be (Score:5, Interesting)
What IBM could do:
1) Open-source the code it owns
2) Binary-blob all non-royalty-bearing code it doesn't own.
3) Sell the complete package including royalty-bearing code for the cost of royalties plus a small markup to cover business expenses.
4) Repeat for older versions
They've already all but open-sourced JFS. If memory serves, the version of JFS in the final version of Warp Server had much the same code as the version that found its way into Linux.
There's an active OS2 Community?!? (Score:1, Interesting)
Wow,
The lengths some people will go to to avoid change astounds me!
Don't get me wrong, it was great, cool, etc FOR ITS'S TIME, but but it's time has passed and now it's just more dated junk.
I used to absolutely LOVE Amiga OS, it was the greatest (of it's time) but I use Linux & windows now....
You should all be ashamed (Score:2, Interesting)
OS/2 was a technology leader for a long time, it was the first OS to take the desktop metaphor seriously. Its programming model (SOM) and template system is still marvelous after all these years. It was the first OS with proper multi-threading support, with voice support etc. etc. Lots of innovations happenend on this platform.
It just had one problem: It was managed by IBM!
When OS/2 version 3 came out, it kicked ass compared to Win 3.11 and Win 95. Just imagine what would have happenend if IBM had decided to put a proper fight in the desktop war.
We would have a far more advanced OS by now.
Currently we are stuck with Vista, which is a graphical update of the interface concepts of Windows 3.11!
It's a shame we are stuck in the 90s wrt human computer interaction.
The thing that could save OS/2 at this point .. (Score:1, Interesting)
... would be if Serenity opensourced eComStation. They probably aren't making a huge profit off sales anyway, and they could still sell a "Corporate Edition" or something bundled with a payware software suite of their choosing.
Amiga also has it.. (Score:1, Interesting)
AROS system has some bounties, IIRC
Re:Or... (Score:5, Interesting)
Want to print a document? Just drag its icon to the printer icon and if your word processor is written right, the document will print without having to start your word processor.
Don't like the color of your terminal window? Drop a color from the color palette to the window and if its written right, it'll not only change to the color you want, but the program will remember!
That's just scratching the surface; hpfs, multimedia, Christ, even the GNU tools all ran under OS/2 (heck, that's how I discovered tcsh, which has been my command line shell for longer than I've known *nix!).
Of course history chose the winner. The WPS was the Win 95 shell done right. It took MS, what, 6 years? to get Windows to the stability of OS/2. Alas, OS/2 is now a corpse. I understand it's still being used, but not to the extent that it could have been. OS/2 was elegant, and Win 95 brutish--having the feel of someone trying to forge the Mona Lisa with a Crayola. Of course, time marches on, and I was able to dodge the Microsoft tax all throughout college by using Linux, which has slowly pulled itself up to start feeling vaguely like the WPS. KDE 4.2 and its promise of further integration of ... stuff has my curiosity piqued.
You're right, though, OS/2 is dead, and people should be looking to migrate their software to something a little more modern.
Re:Team OS/2! (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest problem was the Win/OS2 holodeck that allowed vendors to say they supported OS/2 without having to write a native port. Using Wine as a substitute for native ports (as others here have suggested) would continue that same flawed strategy that only works if there is already a large portfolio of native software.
Linux ate OS/2 market share IMO (Score:5, Interesting)
I was a very fanatical OS/2 user. Not fanatical in a zealotish way but fanatical in that I liked doing all I needed on my PC using OS/2. Some minor issues which couldn't be done were usually easily solved when opening up OS/2 Windows. Another issue is that I actually paid for my sofware. And OS/2 knew some great software packages! If you like GQView these days; I was using something very similiar long before we even heard from Gnome and KDE.
But it became awfully tricky when IBM dropped support for OS/2 and eventually I made the jump fully to Linux. Right now I'm very happy with Ubuntu using a KDE desktop. And the fact that it doesn't have to cost me much is naturally a very welcome benefit as well.
Now, this was years ago. I sometimes try to install my Warp and Merlin CD's in some kind of virtual machine but mostly to no avail (I did got Warp running though). However, I have tried a few of the ComStation live cd's to see what it was all about. And quite frankly; it doesn't manage to impress me one bit. Sure; its a nice revival of the old OS/2 but its main problem (IMO ofcourse) is that it didn't go along with recent developments but instead got stuck somewhere in the last century.
Now; bear with me. I can understand that the developers can only do so much with it. But it would have been a lot better if they would have tried to utilize other people's researches and developments as well. OS/2 had some very powerfull desktop enhancers. Some of those even managed to build an entire business out of their single product because.. it actually sold (I bought several copies myself as well). But.. None of that on eComstation. The interface is basically the same as what we were used to, but which most of us have most likely outgrown.
So instead of wasting money on projects like these I'd think that money would be better put into OS development. But even that might not be enough to get back much of the marketshare. Lets face it; Linux has ate up a lot of marketshare. I sure wouldn't even consider going back anymore. So my stance on this? "Too little, too late", even though I admire the effort.
They should port the OS/2 API to Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to be a OS/2 user, but I stopped about 4 years ago. I sympathize with the OS/2 community, because it was my geek "home" for a while, but they're going about it all wrong. I tried to convince them a long time ago, but they never listened.
The OS/2 kernel is seriously outdated. Hardware support is minimal, and the kernel itself is just dated. It's mostly 16-bit. So there's no reason to keep it. A few people insist that the OS/2 kernel is "nicer" or "better" than the Linux kernel is some way, but these people don't know anything about kernels. It's a stupid argument.
The OS/2 community should port the OS/2 API to Linux. This will allow them to run the WPS (the illustrious GUI that OS/2 users rave about) and every other OS/2 application. This would be a one-time effort, because the API is stable. It hasn't been updated in almost 10 years. Not only that, but it's very well documented
Instead, these guys keep trying to port Linux applications to OS/2. If every OS/2 developer dropped what he was doing and worked on porting the OS/2 API, they'd be done in about a year. They would never have to ask for any more help ever again. The user base would actually grow, even. They'd be able to use all of their applications forever, even on newer hardware. Device support would never be a problem. Even businesses that are based on OS/2 would start moving to Linux. It would be win-win for everyone.
In fact, the WPS might even become quite popular. Someone might try to make an open source version of it, and it might even become a replacement GUI for Linux, competing with Gnome and KDE.
Some bounty! (Score:2, Interesting)
Below it, it says: Current Bounty: $0
I used to be an OS/2 developer. For me to get a compiler, the OS, a machine to install all that stuff on, and the time to do it, I would want a lot of money to do it. Let's put it this way, enough to buy a new car.
Who would want to? (Score:4, Interesting)
Already a well-supported guest on VirtualBox (Score:4, Interesting)
What's the motivation?
Re:You should all be ashamed (Score:1, Interesting)
The desktop, written in SOM by IBM was a bitch to develop for. It was big. bulky, clunky, and prone to crashing the desktop. Because, each little SOM desktop item as a dll that the desktop program called. So, they all ran in the same address space as the desktop. Oh, and each had at least one thread and if you left a few open, you're desktop would run slower than molasses.
I almost got fired from my contracting gig because I mentioned that the best parts of OS/2 were written by MS and the most complained about parts of OS/2: the networking, install, and some of the desktop things, were written by IBM.
Re:Team OS/2! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm with you on that. I really loved working with OS/2 way back when. My first NAT gateway ran on OS/2 before most people never even heard of it.
Not to mention, OS/2 was a pretty darned good DOS multitasker, and a good number of DOS games ran well under OS/2 as well.
It was a pretty good Operating System, low footprint, and it took quite a few years before Linux distributions got as good as OS/2.
Re:What does OS/2 offer today? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's entirely due to lack of interest on the part of virus makers and spyware makers, as OS/2 is not very secure. For example, important libraries used by all processes are mapped to shared, writable memory. It's trivial for a malicious process to take over any other process and run arbitrary code in that other process.
From a security point of view, OS/2 is in the same ballpark as Windows 95, far below Linux, OS X, and any Windows decended from NT (such as NT, 2K, XP, Vista).
Re:ReactOS, Wine (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm just chiming from my observations but wasn't OS/2 great for digital phone systems in the 90s and early 2000s before Linux products took the crown? This is of course well before VOIP.
Re:Open source the OS (Score:3, Interesting)
I, for one, am a fanboy that doesn't care.
OS/2 was the first real operating system I ran, and was pretty amazed by it, falling in love at the first run.
For some years (from 2.0 to "War" 4.x) I used it at my primary OS (ie, a Windows partition for the occasional gaming), and it was sad when it died. The possibility of coming back to Windows was glooming.
But Linux came to the rescue. It was just as good, minus the Presentation Manager (OS/2 neat object-oriented desktop). Although I did not realized at first how important it was, being Free sounded interesting.
Re:Wtf (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Open source the OS (Score:3, Interesting)
I worked at a site in the 1990's which used OS/2 as the main corporate desktop. It was disliked by most of the users for various reasons:
It had a tendency to stack icons in folders at the same x,y coordinate, requiring the user to manually position them
Now none of the above is really the fault of the OS. The UI issues are fairly typical of environments where more effort is given to the internals and where desktop support is a long way away. I think the big problem was that it was the OS favoured by BIG IT and had to be killed because of that association.
One thing I can say for sure: absolutely nobody who had to use it during the day would choose to use it at home, perhaps excluding a few technical people.
Re:ReactOS, Wine (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed.
At a previous company I worked for, our voice mail system was ran by an OS/2 machine. Microsoft's OS/2. When you typed "ver" that's what it said. "Microsoft OS/2" (and some version and copyright info I don't remember anymore). And in classic Microsoft fashion, it wasn't y2k compliant. After the turn of the millennium, I would have to dig through a calendar to find a year that matched up with 2000, 2001, 2002, etc.
When I left there in late '03, it was still running strong.
I can honestly say I don't know the state of it these days. The company is still there in a small suite in a corporate park. I've can only imagine that thing is still running...
Re:They should port the OS/2 API to Linux (Score:1, Interesting)
BTW, I heard that IBM had ported OS/2 to Power PC just before they discontinued it. That fork might have been the last straw. Either way, the OS was doomed by the Windows juggernaut, just like NetWare, UNIX, and many less popular works.
I had the initial OS/2 developers kit. I remember it arrived just before their first OS/2 conference in Seattle (at the Westin). I didn't even have time to load it on my new IBM PC/AT before driving up there. They showed the Presentation Manager even though the kit had only shipped the character mode UI. The hint of things to come was that Bill Gates did not attend the Conference. Steve Balmer ran the show and was not very convincing. When I got home and started up the $3,000 SDK, it would not even compile "hello world". After dealing with several releases, I gave up on OS/2 and programming in general.
Re:What! (Score:1, Interesting)
You've got two choices nowadays: OS/2 on your ATM, or XP Embedded... Which would you choose to keep your money from spitting out?
Re:Team OS/2! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What! (Score:3, Interesting)
I still remember the cash register at my first job ran OS/2... I pressed the key combo to get out of a full screen POS application (can't even remember what the combo was), and realized I was in OS/2. From that point on I always wanted to bring in Doom and run it on the cash register.
My bounty is for O/S2 to be open source. (Score:4, Interesting)
Otherwise go the way of Commodore.
Really good points. (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you have the solution in a nutshell here.
Porting the OS/2 API would solve alot of these problems, quickly (relatively) and permanently.
I wonder how many of the people who are pushing for a ground up rewrite of the OS would be happy with that.
A few years back I got a savage requirement to relive my C64 old days, and even though there were emulators that were if anything "better than the real thing" - thanks to virtual disks etc, they were of no interest to Me. I had to have the "real thing" back. :)
I don't understand it, but there it is. Thank goodness I did'nt want to run an old Cray OS