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+-   Should IBM's SOM/DSOM be open sourced? on Saturday February 09 2008, @01:39PM Esther Schindler

Submitted by Esther Schindler on Saturday February 09 2008, @01:39PM
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Esther Schindler writes "An open source OS/2 just isn't going to happen. But, according to two journalists at very different publications, it just might be possible for Linux desktop users to get one of OS/2's best features: SOM (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." He then follows up with suitably techie details, such as:

The closest many users ever got to SOM was OS/2's Workplace Shell, its desktop interface. What made SOM so powerful in the Workplace Shell was that it made it so easy to customize the desktop and its applications. With SOM, getting an application to look and act like a KDE, GNOME or what-have-you desktop program is almost trivial. Instead of delicately playing with APIs to move an application from, say, Ubuntu GNOME to OpenSUSE KDE, an SOM-aware application simply needs to call on the WinReplaceObjectClass API to use the KDE set of classes instead of GNOME's.


Meanwhile, Esther Schindler takes the developer angle in a blog post at CIO.com, in which she writes, "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." Her post goes into some SOM history, including the fact that it was already ported to AIX and other platforms.

Coincidence? Not really. This is what happens when old journalist buddies (both of whom used to write about OS/2) get into a long virtual conversation about favorite technology, and what it'd take to bring it to the FOSS community. In this case, they agree, it's probably achievable — and worth doing. Do you concur? If so, what are the business issues that would convince IBM to say Yes?"
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