
OsFree Project (Open Source OS/2 Clone) - mindcrime
http://www.osfree.org/
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orionblastar
Yes IBM couldn't open source OS/2 because there were at least 300+ third party
commercial licensed pieces of code that it used to make it happen. They would
have to get permission from them all to open source their code.

Besides OSFree there is also the Voyager project:
[http://voyager.netlabs.org/](http://voyager.netlabs.org/)

Voyager takes on a Star Trek name because OS/2 3.0 was named Warp and IBM
tried to use Star Trek to market it.

I'd like to see the OS/2 API calls in a WINE type environment for GNU/Linux to
run OS/2 code under Linux and other operating systems. It would be easier than
providing driver support for modern hardware.

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mixmastamyk
Cool, I always liked OS2, but I wonder what the chances are for this to
succeed? Even reactos is far from complete, and the window for Win2k-2003
compatibility needs is shrinking.

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orionblastar
I once proposed that ReactOS, AROS, HaikuOS, OSFree, FreeDOS, and others all
share source code to make a complete operating system that could run apps from
different operating systems so they don't all have to reinvent the wheel each
time a new OS is written.

Imagine an OS that can run DOS, Windows, OS/2, BeOS, AmigaOS apps and have
them interact with each other.

The thing about OSFree is that it is an alpha test and not a full OS yet. Some
other operating systems are farther along and if they shared source code they
could make OSFree more complete. Using ReactOS source code on OSFree would add
in Windows driver models and the ability to run Windows apps like Win-OS2 did
on OS/2 2.0. It would make finding drivers a lot easier if they had a Windows
Driver.

I've donated to Haiku and ReactOS in the past, I hope they finish one day.

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cpeterso
That was Microsoft's original plan for Windows NT: Win32, OS/2, and POSIX
would be different API servers running on the NT microkernel.

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orionblastar
The OS/2 programs were command line only and didn't include the GUI ones.

Microsoft removed the OS/2 ability in future versions of NT. Originally it was
Microsoft OS/2 NT 3.0 as Microsoft wrote their own version of OS/2 shared with
IBM like they did for DOS. But they added the Windows GUI to it and re-branded
it as Windows NT 3.1.

I think the POSIX was removed as well in a future version.

I remember Windows NT 4.0 for MIPS systems, it had some sort of DOS emulation
level as well. Microsoft wanted NT to be cross platform and then bailed on it
and went Intel only.

IBM tried OS/2 for PowerPC systems and it flopped as well.

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lukeh
Actually, MS did have something called the "Windows NT Add-On Subsystem for
Presentation Manager" that permitted one to run 16-bit OS/2 GUI applications.

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rbanffy
I liked OS/2 at the time - a lot - but I am not sure why would anyone want an
OS/2 clone at this point in time. Besides the "because I can" and "it's fun"
standard reasons for building an OS, there is little reason to do it.

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leejoramo
OS/2 was still used in some finance sectors. The Parallels virtual machine
software was supposedly originally created to provide virtual machines to
continue to support OS/2\. (Porting Parallels to Mac OS X was an opportunity
that came along later.)

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cpeterso
Someone still maintains an OS/2 port of Firefox. Mozilla removed the OS/2
files from the Firefox source repo just last year because they no longer
compiled. IIUC the OS/2 maintainer couldn't upstream his fixes to Mozilla
because he replaced Firefox's build system (autoconf + python DSL) with kbuild
"in order to simplify maintenance and speed up the build process".

[https://github.com/bitwiseworks/mozilla-
os2](https://github.com/bitwiseworks/mozilla-os2)

[https://bugzil.la/969757](https://bugzil.la/969757)

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ben_bai
Still waiting for 0.0.5. But i guess Dezember 2009 isn't to far off... Dead
project!

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nickpsecurity
Now the ATM vendors that opposed Microsoft might get some security updates and
improvements. And run on a microkernel, too. Interesting lol.

Edit to note: _open-source_ updates and improvements rather than eComStation.

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codezero
Is there a Python to Rexx transputer? :)

