This development could be helped if the underlying code becomes open source once/if patent rights expire (and I believe they do in 3-4 years as there was little development in the source past OS/2 ver 4.52) as that makes life easier and more fun for developers.
It will, IF, and only IF, the source code is made available. That could be the reason why IBM hinted that they have "lost" the source code. Once patent rights run out, nothing changes, unless the source code is made available, and I expect that that will never happen.
What it might do, is encourage more people to start deconstructing OS/2, as some of the Russians have been doing. However, I think that Mensys has been doing some of that too, to get to the most serious problems. That was how they came up with those extra fixes that were included with ACPI. As I understand it, they were told, by IBM, to do whatever they thought was necessary.
My view is, that anything that is developed from scratch, needs to be open source. But the WPS is definitely NOT the place to start, for a rebuild project. There are many smaller parts of OS/2 that basically stand alone, that could be reworked, with fewer people required, and a much better chance to show some progress in the near future. Some of that stuff has been started, by porting parts of Linux, but there has been little interest, so far, partly because the parts that have been done (BIND, DHCP) are not understood by most users, and many are afraid to try that stuff, simply because they are afraid to render their systems unusable. Also, there has been little "advertizing" about those things, so many people don't even know that they exist. OS2world does post announcements, which helps, but people don't bother looking at stuff that they don't understand.
One of the more troublesome parts of OS/2 is XCOPY (which may be one of the things that Microsoft still has some code in). The function of XCOPY is pretty well understood, and many people use it, but it is known that XCOPY has trouble with many thousands of files. Trying to fix the original program doesn't make sense, but it should not be too difficult for somebody to map out what it is supposed to do, and write a new program to do it. While they are at it, they might as well use resources that are available, like large memory, and AHCI function, that was not available when the original program was written.
MiniLVM is required to set up disk drives, but it also has some limitations that have not been resolved. Mensys has the code for that program, but I suspect that the faults are in the base LVM code. This will need to be fixed, if we ever hope to support large (>2TB) disk drives. I think that Mensys has done a preliminary evaluation, but I don't think much else has been done.
Then, there is the question of NIC drivers. Mensys has developed the NVETH (NVIDIA), Intel, and Realtek, NIC drivers (wired versions only, so far). They were always supposed to be developed as a template, so that other people could continue the project, and develop more drivers for more devices (RALINK, BROADCOM etc.). AFAIK, nobody has stepped up to do that. The same will be true after Mensys gets a template for wireless devices. There will also be requirements to update the current MultiMac drivers, as newer devices become available. Somebody had better become interested, or we are going nowhere fast.
USB devices: Wim Brule has stepped up to make video cameras work, but I think he is working alone, and I have no idea what license model he might be using (if any). He also did the Canon 4400F (?) scanner thing, and the USBECD driver, which makes it possible to interface with "unknown" USB devices (among other things).
Mensys does, of course, have other things that they are working on (ACPI, AHCI, etc.), but that is only a small part of what needs to be done, in the short term. UEFI is already causing a lot of trouble, with no resolution in sight.
OS/2 today, is so far behind, that it will likely be impossible to catch up. Many, talented, people are working at keeping it going, but little work is being done to make advances. It would take many more talented people to make progress. As noted, if somebody pulls those talented people out of the mix, to do something like rewrite the WPS, there will be nobody left to keep it going in the short term. If the base OS stops working, any work done on the WPS project will be for nothing. Of course, there are still virtual machines, and old hardware, to run it on, but that certainly isn't going to attract serious new users.
So, back to:
What is the agenda for OS/2 today?
The way I see it, is that the agenda is to work as hard as possible, to extend the life as much as possible, with the resources that we have available. To do that, every OS/2 (eCS) user will need to contribute in one way, or another, and priorities will have to be established. Mensys has established some priorities, but they are subject to the reality that they need to be able to pay for what they do (including pay salaries). It is okay to dream about open sourcing the WPS, but doing it will mean that other areas will suffer. You can have the best WPS possible, but what good is it if you can't even boot OS/2, because it can't figure out UEFI? Those who have avoided upgrading to eCS, for one reason or another, are not helping the cause.
Second agenda: Somebody needs to win a BIG lottery, and donate a good chunk of it to new development. There was a case, recently, where some guy got whacked twice by lightening, in the same storm, and lived, so it may not be impossible.
