Hi
Why do I always create such big replies when I talk about this subject?, it annoys me, but here it goes.
I think (personal opinion) it will be interesting to put efforts on cloning an open source OS/2, see if it can produce something useful and try to grow from that side. I'm sure that the first version of the Linux kernel used to be very unreliable and needed a lot of work, with time it evolved. But if Linus and other developers would said at that time that is was too much work to have an open source unix kernel clone, there will be no Linux today. We need to start with something that may suck, but that will have the chance to evolve with time (that's why open source is important).
I see open source as a way to reduce risk and dependency of a single company or developer. With the legal permission that gives the open source licensing to create derivative works, it allows the software to shift from one developer/company to another if it is necessary, that reduces the risk to be left "High and Dry", like IBM, Serenity and Mensys did with us.
Open source does not mean "free of charge" or "people working for free" it is a licensing and development methodology. The question should not be if it is open source or not, open source already won a lot of space and a lot of close software uses open source components as base. What ee should be questioning is giving money and efforts to produce more new close source software under this platform.
The discussion has been summarized to "what it is more important?". To have better hardware support and the drivers that we are missing, which in a few years we will miss a different set of drivers, or to have a long term strategy when we can assure that the platform will endure in the future.
For the moment Arca Noae is following the "short term driver strategy", which is good because you can not eat more than you can chew. Creating a new OS/2 distro and selling it is a long/complex project and they almost have reached what eComStation offers in just one year. But I don't see nothing wrong letting the community (or any other developer) to have their own long term strategy for the platform until Arca Noae gets one.
My idea (which I don't have yet the skills or resources to accomplish) is cloning the OS/2 components little by little, since the IBM's ownership of the binaries is a limitation that does not allows us to grow the user/developer base. Sure, there are more factors, but being stuck with that compared to other OSes is a big limitation.
That's another reason, why I suggested to rather invest time and efforts into already existing projects. "where everybody else is", to take on the big task to bring OS/2 onto new computers, while still keeping backward compatibility for older machines..
I also disagree, if we are going to jump into "where everybody else is" projects, everybody here will switch to Linux at the once
Let's support Arca Noae, but let also people to experiment and try to create new paths, it is their own time after all.
Regards
