More on new OS/2 developments

[Lewis Rosenthal]

[Starting a new thread, as the original one seems to have gone off a bit.]

I posted a message a week or so ago concerning my plans to start a new organization focused entirely on OS/2 products and services. For those of you who may have missed that, the gist was that little in the way of new OS/2 products or releases have been made available in the past year or so, and that there seems to be a need in the community for new applications and updates. I was able to locate several contributors of time and resources and get them to come together to form a new company which will be focused on this market, maintaining strong ties to the user community, and dedicated to maintaining the viability of OS/2 on modern hardware.

I also said that I would have further announcements. Today, I'd like to share with you some more details of some of the team working to bring new and updated technology to the platform.

We are working closely with bww bitwise works GmbH in Austria. Bitwise ports software to eCS such as  Java and QT, and is directly involved in the current work to update Firefox for eCS. Also, other developers such as Steven Levine and David Azarewicz have committed to providing time and code for the new company.

We are also working to help make Warpstock Europe 2014 happen this year, and while date and location have not yet been set, we are committed to making details public in the near future.

Many people have come forward offering support and asking what they may do to help. Rest assured, as we move forward, we will stay in touch and will advise when we need assistance. We greatly appreciate the response we've received so far, with so many willing to donate to this project. Stay tuned!

All the best.

[Andreas Schnellbacher]

Hi Lewis,

do you have also any news about Joachim and/or Roderick?

Do you have access to the eCS source files repository? Steven surely has.

What is your agreement with Mensys or its successor?

I support any change to a better maintainable system, as it was announced.

Andreas

[Sigurd Fastenrath]

Hi Lewis,

do you have also any news about Joachim and/or Roderick?

Do you have access to the eCS source files repository? Steven surely has.

What is your agreement with Mensys or its successor?

I support any change to a better maintainable system, as it was announced.

Andreas

Here:

http://news.ecomstation.com/article.php?id=25041&group=ecomstation.support.misc#25041

"An Ejector seat - you are joking"
"I never joke about my work 007"

(More or less: Bond and Q in "Goldfinger")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbLPQWZWXjs

 

[Lewis Rosenthal]

Joachim is still with Mensys, though Roderick has left the organization.

While questions abound as to the status of eCS 2.2, there does not seem to be a clear roadmap or projected release date, either for a fresh beta or GA. As a consultant, it's hard for me to justify deploying beta software for a paying client. This is just some of my motivation for starting this new project.

Presently, I have no agreement with Mensys or XEU.

Cheers, guys!

[Neil Waldhauer]

Presently, I have no agreement with Mensys or XEU.

Thanks, Lewis. Good communication includes putting out bad news, too.  If we are limited to putting fixes and enhancements on top of the end users old licenses, it's a pretty serious limitation. I'm looking forward to more clarity on this issue. Like most here, I'm hoping this comes out well.

Good luck!!

[Martin Iturbide]

Thanks Lewis for sharing that with us.

[Lewis Rosenthal]

I'm happy to share what I can, when I can, Martin. 

Sergey, I have some grave concerns regarding licensing with OS/4. If we can be assured that no reverse engineering has taken place, we might be more inclined to consider getting involved, but that's just a start. It's difficult to remain friends with Big Blue while playing fast and loose with their copyrights.

Neil, the situation is what it is. I recall when Novell first released Novell Nterprise Linux Services (NNLS), it shipped as a supplementary disc alongside United Linux. It was sometime after that when Novell bought SuSE and finally shipped a unified installer for SLES. Setting aside fresh installations for a moment, I think that *any* eCS 2.x user would be happy to get the equivalent of an overlay CD which could upgrade the non-IBM components of the system in a uniform manner, resulting in Product X, based on OS/2. New installations would need a different approach, of course, and neither of these is preferable to a single disc solution, I realize. That said, one of the (to be) stated goals of the new organization is that clear licensing must be provided with every product distributed.

Clear branding. True licensing. Good, solid code. Excellent value. These are the things we wish to promote (and again, while I've been the most visible member of the team, I am only one of a much larger group. Many of the people we all know from throughout eCS' development, and a few fresh (or less visible) faces, are involved in this undertaking.

Cheers

[walking_x]

I have some grave concerns regarding licensing with OS\4.

Neither Pasha nor I am are not involved into OS/4 kernel development now.
My own project - QSINIT - is available with sources (but not under GNU license) and designed be a some kind of advanced boot time tool (in addition to kernel loading feature).

And, I think - OS/4 kernel is going into wrong direction now (even if ignore rhis "reverse - engeneering" problem). But, buildable kernel sources still can help in testing and development - in many cases.

[dbanet]

And, I think - OS/4 kernel is going into wrong direction now (even if ignore rhis "reverse - engeneering" problem). But, buildable kernel sources still can help in testing and development - in many cases.

Also it is really now making good progress, although there are some regressions and bugs, especially in the latest versions. They should and would be fixed.

If I convince Phoenix to produce a stable retail kernel release, for example, each 200 SVN revisions, I'll really look forward to see OS/4 included in Lewis's OS/2 build.

[Jacques]

Do you have access to the eCS source files repository? Steven surely has.

There are more people besides Alex and Stev who has access to the repository.

I just download a complete one.

Kind regards, Jacques
Member Dutch eComStation Test and Translation Group

[Sergey Posokhov]

They don't have access because of some people who rock the boat and shouting about software piracy.

Unite together as soon as possible.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi van Leeuwen

Sadly this is something we can not know. Agreements between Mensys and developers are confidential and it very unlikely that we find the details about it.

But I think that many developer only licensed their work (binaries and source code) to Mensys, so both has the right. On that case it is likely to have a future for that development.  Plus many of Mensys software was to put together the open source components that are available for OS/2. It was a hard work to put that together but that can be replicated.

I still think that Mensys "Crown Jewel" was ACPI, which is based on an open source Intel ACPI driver, which allows derivative work to be closed. But I don't know how owns the right of that port.

My suggestions to developers is that do not sign any agreements with "eternal copyrights". The fair way to do it, if there is no choice, is that both maintain the property of the source code, and the company that is paying for it has some "time exclusivity" for some years. But of course it will be 1000 times better to have a project that is open source with all the development in the public. 

Remember that on this platform the majority of copyrighted non-open source software is now abandonware.

Regards

[Andreas Schnellbacher]

> Do you have access to the eCS source files repository? Steven surely has.

There are more people besides Alex and Stev who has access to the repository.

I just download a complete one.

Hi Jacques,

I guess you mean the repository to build the DVD of. Note that there exists also another source repository, of which the other one contains just compiled files. Fortunately, the amount of that was shrinked by the active people, but it still exists.

[Lewis Rosenthal]

Apologies for the really late follow-up to this thread. It seems that somewhere along the line, my notification settings got messed up, so I was unaware that more follow-up had been posted for me, here.

If I convince Phoenix to produce a stable retail kernel release, for example, each 200 SVN revisions, I'll really look forward to see OS/4 included in Lewis's OS/2 build.

This is highly unlikely.

Do you have access to the eCS source files repository? Steven surely has.

Unfortunately, Jacques, I'm not in a position to comment on this at the moment.

They don't have access because of some people who rock the boat and shouting about software piracy.

Code which is owned by other people is not ours to take, modify, sell, or distribute. I would be one of those people "shouting about software piracy." Our goal is to ensure that proper owners receive proper credit, care, and treatment of their code and of their copyrights. Period. OS/2 is a licensing mess, which has only become more difficult to decipher over time. We need to be mindful of that, which is one of the main reasons why we are not currently considering replacing the OS/2 kernel (patching it in memory is another issue altogether, and well beyond the scope of this discussion).

I still think that Mensys "Crown Jewel" was ACPI, which is based on an open source Intel ACPI driver, which allows derivative work to be closed. But I don't know how owns the right of that port.

Without getting into the current copyright status of ACPI, it is surely quite obvious that ACPI is the key to running OS/2 on modern hardware.

My suggestions to developers is that do not sign any agreements with "eternal copyrights". The fair way to do it, if there is no choice, is that both maintain the property of the source code, and the company that is paying for it has some "time exclusivity" for some years. But of course it will be 1000 times better to have a project that is open source with all the development in the public. 

Remember that on this platform the majority of copyrighted non-open source software is now abandonware.

Certain projects lend themselves to being open source, while others do not. Our aim is to open source what we can, and respect the rights of others who have chosen (or have had no choice but) to restrict their code under proprietary licenses.

Cheers

[Martin Iturbide]

Thanks Lewis for your reply. I hope you can really move forward with this and define your business, community and platform strategy at "Arca Noae" and share it with us when you are ready.