Certainly respect all your points of view, but also do some considerations, and evaluate them without the devotion and love of the passionate, partly because I too am an OS2 fan:
If I plan a project that resembles a complete rewrite of an operating system (based on which model, open or closed source is of little importance) and I have only two programmers, I know that in the best case the first goals reach them in 15 years, probably, if I have, instead, 500 programmers, I reach the goal in 5 years. Users want to continue to use this system because bla .. bla .. bla .. What should I do if I only have 2 programmers in the meantime? tries to answer yourself.
Mensys/SSI has not pursued any similar project that would point to a definitive resolution of the problem by rewriting from scratch essential parts of the operating system (if I have not the original source code what should i do? Have to rewrite it from scratch, are you agree?) but aimed only to take IBM OS/2's users-park and maintain it, okay, a small software house, requires short-term goals .. bla .. bla .. bla, well, corporate policies, that's fine, but You have totally missed the goal.
A team of programmers led by engineers really motivated would have
dealt with the problem looking forward and with a lot of breath, a visual much more extensive, they would have to figure something reliable in short-term (achievable goal even with few resources) and then after 14 years (help me to say many!!!), collaborating with the OSFree team, given that the resources were few, they would given you at least the first tenderly child of a new, fully regenerated OS2. They would not waste time to adapt, try to configure, a patch here, another there .. blah blah blah, does not give me the code? well, I'll rewrite alone, but it takes the time it takes, and to not lose my clients, they would study a valid alernative, knowing that this alternative tomorrow will be useful.
I want to express this concept when I say that with a different point of view we would not have wasted time and resources.
Again, forgive the outburst.