The OS2 petition

The OS2 petition
Posted by Kim Haverblad - Sunday, 02 December 2007

http://www.os2world.com/petition

It is known that OS/2 isn't well supported by companies that make software or by individual developers, and OS/2 faces a high possibility of being replaced and/or withdrawn from the market. Hence this petition to IBM so the much-loved OS/2 Technology can be freely distributed and developed around the world. We understand that making OS/2 Open source will be beneficial for the IBM customers as well as for IBM, if the hurdle of third-party supplied code can be overcome. To this end we are willing to contribute our own efforts.

Making OS/2 Open Source will benefit all IBM customers that had invested in this OS. Customers that are willing to continue using OS/2 will get the benefits of an open OS that will be continuously developed by individual developers and/or software companies, their ownership fees will decrease and they will have the enhanced security of an OS that will continue to be relevant due to the open-ended nature of open source (following the BSD and Linux examples). Also customers choosing to migrate to other platforms will find it beneficial to have OS/2 open source, as it will be easier to adapt their programs or make an OS/2 interpreter or emulator for the transition.

We know that IBM faces a problem of making OS/2 Open Source because of the private sources from third party companies. What we ask of IBM is to release as much of the source as possible and list the OS/2 components that need an Open Source replacement. With a list of components that need to be replaced companies interested on OS/2 or individual developers can create Open Source software to fill this "holes" in the OS.

IBM will surely benefit from the open sourcing of OS/2 as the OS/2 Community will freely develop Open Source software as it has with BSD and Linux. IBM can take advantage of this and have less expenses on the maintainance due to contributions of developers around the world.


Conclusions
We are very pleased that IBM has moved to embrace open standards and we whole-heartedly agree that the benefits of Open Source software are many. We believe IBM understands that open source software is directly beneficial to the customers, as IBM is supporting a 110% Linux.

For customers that want to keep OS/2 or for those long-time users who are considering migrating to another OS the open sourcing of OS/2 makes perfect sense.

We also have an OS/2 community of developers that has produced several open source software for OS/2 and many are willing to continue doing so.

First petition round
More than two years ago on September 25, 2005, we sent you a letter with a petition that contained 11,613 signatures requesting IBM to release the source code of Operating System 2 (OS/2 Warp) - or at least release the source code that IBM owns - to the public under an open source license. More information about the first petition can be found here.

Second petition round
On November 19, 2007, we sent a second letter to IBM where we insisted on implementing the stipulations contained in this petition because we believe that OS/2 is an important part of the history of the Operating System, and furthermore, it still contains values that the computer science field considers unique.

More information regarding the second petition round, please check following news posting from the 2nd December, 2007.

Your email will not be used for any other reason to notify you about petition status.

http://www.os2world.com/petition

Popular Posts

Labels

64bit Activity Adempire advocate Akta Apache ASAS Azam backup backuppc Bash Beowulf Big Data Broadband Budget Centos Cinta Cluster CMS cmsfornerd Company Complain computer Computer Operation Conference Contest Data Centre Operation DBmail Digg Digital Certification Discussion Group Django DNS Docker Domain Duit Online Economy Elastic Stack Elasticsearch ELK email email server English Evangelist Events Family Tree Fedora File System Firefox Foss FOSS.my FreeBSD FTX Gesaan Gluster Gmail Godaddy.com Google Google App GTUG Hacking Hadoop hafnie Harisfazillah Jamel horde HP-UX hwclock IBM ICT Service Delivery and Operation Indonesia Internet Internet Tools Itanium Jabatan IT Negara Jaring Java Javascript Jepun Jiwang Joke Joomla K3S K3Sup Kernel Kesihatan Kibana KOSTEM Kubernetes ldap Linux Linux Counter linuxmalaysia Logstash Love Mailman MailScanner Mailwatch Malay Malaysia MAMPU MDeC meetup Melaka Melayu Merdeka Microsoft Migration mirror sites Money Online Monitor MOSC 2010 MOSC2010 mosc2011 MOSC2013 MOSCMY MOSCMY2014 MOSCMY2015 Mozilla MPI MSC Malaysia MSC Malaysia OSCONF MSCOSCONF My Love MyGOSSCON MyMeeting Mypenguin99 mysql Nagios NagiosQL Negaraku nss_ldap ntp OBW2014 Open Office Open Source openldap Openoffice.org OpenStack Opera OS2 OS400 OSCC OSCC MAMPU osdc.my OSS OSS Policy OWASP Parallel Computing People Power Personal Petition PGP PHP Pligg Podman Politik Postfix Postgresql Programming Proxmox Python q1moscmy2015 Questionnaires Research Research tools RPM SASSIAN Sassian 85-89 Sassians 85-89 SCO Security Sekolah Sekolah Alam Shah Shell script Software License Solaris SongketMail SongketMailFilter sourceforge spam spamassassin Spoof Survey SVR4 System Tools Technorati Terjemahan Terminal TMnet Tor Training translation Treasury Malaysia Trend Micro Twitter Ubuntu Unix Virtualization VMS VOIP Wang Web Server Windows Zimbra
 

LinuxMalaysia Mastodon