Author Topic: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?  (Read 30692 times)

guzzi

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Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« on: May 20, 2014, 11:38:20 pm »
I just noticed this. Probably a pre-announcement, waiting for the officail publication:


http://pastebin.com/TCRGEkX0

Full text:

    Dear Fellow OS/2 Users...
     
    My name is Lewis Rosenthal. Some of you may already be familiar with me as
    the maintainer of several OS/2 and eCS mailing lists, the web host for
    VOICE, and as the treasurer of Warpstock Corporation, the advocacy
    organization which holds the annual OS/2 and eCS conference in North America.
     
    Our community has been relatively quiet over the past year or so, in terms
    of new OS/2 products and eCS releases. Late last year, I began to think
    about the future of OS/2 as a platform, knowing that in the background, a
    considerable amount of work was being done to maintain, update, and support
    eCS, with little made available to the audience.
     
    I began actively seeking investors for a new company with a new vision for
    OS/2. To my delight, I have been able to assemble a group of such
    like-minded people, and as I write this, we are forming this new company.
    Part of the philosophy of the new entity will be to maintain strong ties to
    the user community through the remaining organizations we have, and to
    cultivate long term relationships with cooperative developers and vendors to
    provide what we think is a more unified and organized face for our platform
    of choice. Call this "branding and packaging" if you will.
     
    While the products offered by the new company as packaged will be fee-based,
    as far as we are able, code will be GPL (or GPL-compatible).
     
    In the coming weeks, look for further announcements, a new website, public
    forums and mailing lists, and soon after, a working web shop.

« Last Edit: May 20, 2014, 11:45:16 pm by guzzi »

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2014, 04:51:58 am »
I haven't found any source about it.

I really hope that this turn to be truth but for the moment is just a rumor.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #2 on: May 21, 2014, 05:18:07 am »
Lewis announced it on the ecs-tech mailing list. There are other things happening that agree with it as well but it is not for me to announce what others are doing. There should be more announcements.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #3 on: May 21, 2014, 01:57:25 pm »
Good. Thanks for sharing the source.

It was announced on May 19 on the eCS-Technical Yahoo Group.  I wish Lewis the best of luck with this endeavor and I'm willing to help on whatever it is on my hands to promote his OS2-eCS open source software projects !!!

This are very exciting news, but we also need and collaborate to this initiatives.
Martin Iturbide
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... just share the dream.

Lewis Rosenthal

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #4 on: May 21, 2014, 05:59:26 pm »
Sorry for the late follow-up, here, and thanks for starting this thread!

Indeed, there are many things happening behind the scenes right now; too many to list, and lots of new and exciting stuff coming.

Right now, the best help we can get is for people to spread the word, particularly outside the normal OS/2 and eCS channels, perhaps to disgruntled/disenfranchised Windows users, who now understand the feeling of betrayal we all had when IBM decided to throw in the towel. I've had several clients of mine enter into serious discussions concerning what to do about the XP EOL situation, realizing that Windows 8.x on the PC is no joy.

Thanks again, and I'll do my best to stop by and post more often!

Cheers/2
Lewis
-------------------------------------------------------------
Lewis G Rosenthal, CNA, CLP, CLE, CWTS
Managing Member
Arca Noae, LLC                               www.arcanoae.com

dbanet

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #5 on: May 21, 2014, 10:09:37 pm »
Sorry for the late follow-up, here, and thanks for starting this thread!

Indeed, there are many things happening behind the scenes right now; too many to list, and lots of new and exciting stuff coming.

Right now, the best help we can get is for people to spread the word, particularly outside the normal OS/2 and eCS channels, perhaps to disgruntled/disenfranchised Windows users, who now understand the feeling of betrayal we all had when IBM decided to throw in the towel. I've had several clients of mine enter into serious discussions concerning what to do about the XP EOL situation, realizing that Windows 8.x on the PC is no joy.

Thanks again, and I'll do my best to stop by and post more often!

Cheers/2

This.
Is.
So.
Cool.

Thank you, Lewis!

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #6 on: May 21, 2014, 11:27:21 pm »
Hi Lewis

Good luck with it. I hope that everything works fine.

Sorry to go further on this and try to discuss thing about your company that I do not know about, but I cannot resist trying to see ahead.

1) Please do not hear anybody that is saying to you "this is impossible", or "this cannot be done". I personally received private’s emails trying to stop me every time I propose something that may change the "status quo" or when I try to search for some different alternatives to reach a goal.  A "reality check" is important, but I personally think you are already good on this area. If something can not be done you will find about it at it's time, but if you don't try it you will never know.

2)
Quote
While the products offered by the new company as packaged will be fee-based, as far as we are able, code will be GPL (or GPL-compatible).

I agreed that you want to set a fee for you products but please consider this:

- If you start hiding the binaries of an open source product, do not get mad if someone grab your source code and re-compile the binaries. It is completely legal and that is why open source software shifts from a “selling license” business to a “services” business.

- Please be a good open source citizen, do not try to link open source software to a close source proprietary library just to try to control the selling of binaries for a fee. This may be hard because sometimes one may fall to think that "if I'm putting money on this, I should be free to do whatever I want", but being a bad open source citizen brings bad reputation and resistance at the end.

3) A liked a lot what you said that you plan to make a company that maintain strong ties to the user community. It is hard to try to balance the “business needs for profit” with the “we want it all available for free (as in freedom)” of the community. If you try to squeeze every single dollar from the community for everything, it is possible that the community will react in a bad way. From the other side investors may want their money return in a desperate way.  So keeping balance may be a challenging task.

4) I liked a lot the way that Bitwise has done several OS/2-eCS ports. They do it in the open (with a public repository),  collaborating and receiving feedback from the community. I understand that the community may not be a reliable source of funds, but I hope that you can try to pull some interesting synergy as Bitwise has done in some of his projects. Please consider to mimic the positive side of their model.

5) Having corporate customer is important. It is important to shift from "only selling licenses" to "selling services". Licenses are a cost, while services provide added value to a customer. It is important that you charge for services to maintain the skilled people on your team. It is hard to stop thinking like the 90's where selling licenses and protecting the intellectual property was the only thing important. Now we have a lot of source code available, people like to share, and developers don't want to reinvent the wheel, times has changed and sometime is hard to understand different business models.

This is just a suggestion and a personal opinion, and does not mean it may complete apply to you, but I just cannot hold myself of the excitement to have a new player on this community.

I wish you all kinds of success with your company, and I hope I can help too.

Regards.
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

dazarewicz

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #7 on: May 22, 2014, 06:31:24 pm »
I don't typically read forums like this, but I was asked to post something here.

I know it has been really quiet in the OS/2 community for a long time. This can lead some people to think that nothing has been happening. Actually, a lot has been going on in the background. Development continues and we are working on a new infrastructure to distribute updates, handle support, etc. There are several people involved in working on this new infrastructure, including myself and Lewis. Watch for some new, exciting things coming very soon.

David Azarewicz

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #8 on: May 22, 2014, 06:59:08 pm »
Thanks David for the post! Finally we are getting hopeful indications that the future of this O.S., that a lot of us have been supporting since back in the 90's, might still have a future in the hands of a more competent group of leaders and will continue to have people like yourself supplying the technical expertise!

klipp

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #9 on: May 22, 2014, 07:15:10 pm »
Hi guys,

Like David, I don't typically post to these forums, but I would also like to say we are still here and development continues.  My primary focus at the moment is on OpenWatcom updates to support building Firefox.

Enjoy,

Steven

dbanet

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #10 on: May 22, 2014, 08:17:35 pm »
I don't typically read forums like this, but I was asked to post something here.

I know it has been really quiet in the OS/2 community for a long time. This can lead some people to think that nothing has been happening. Actually, a lot has been going on in the background. Development continues and we are working on a new infrastructure to distribute updates, handle support, etc. There are several people involved in working on this new infrastructure, including myself and Lewis. Watch for some new, exciting things coming very soon.

David Azarewicz

When is 2.2?

Dave Yeo

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #11 on: May 23, 2014, 04:26:41 am »
ecomstation I'm sure is trademarked so I'd guess we should be expecting something more like 1.0 with whatever name Lewis and friends come up.

BigGoofyGuy

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #12 on: May 23, 2014, 03:43:03 pm »
I find this thread to be encouraging.  8) It seems there no future for OS/2 - eCS and OSFree seems to be missing in action. I am there seems to be a future for this cool opeating system.  8)

Perhaps a thread could be started on what people might consider a new name for the newer operating system?  ;D I wonder how creative the possible names could be.  ::)
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Pete

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #13 on: May 24, 2014, 02:16:58 am »
Hi Tom

Well, if it was a Swedish operating system we could call it "BjornAgain/2"   ;D


Regards

Pete

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Re: Breaking OS/2 news, new OS/2 company! New OS/2?
« Reply #14 on: May 24, 2014, 02:14:02 pm »
Hi Tom

Well, if it was a Swedish operating system we could call it "BjornAgain/2"   ;D


Regards

Pete

I think that is really funny.  ;D
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