OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Applications

No word from Mensys/XEU - Alternatives?

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Martin Iturbide:
Hi

Since WarpStock 2014 (October 24-26) I haven't got any news from Mensys about eComStation. At WarpStock Menso told us that they were working on an agreement with Arca Noae, reorganization,  Joachim was becoming the product manager, and that they are moving on. But for the moment no news or formal statements had been released.

Instead of commenting about Mensys situation or making speculative statements maybe we should start thinking about alternatives for the community.

The good thing from Arca Noae is that they made commercially available "the crown jewel of drivers" for OS/2 users, so there is not dependency on buying the full eCS anymore to get the ACPI driver.

The issues remains in:
1) You can not buy new licenses of OS/2 legally. OS/2 Warp 4.52 it is abandonware, which falls into the gray area of copyrights. It may be illegal to distribute OS/2, but IBM is not enforcing copyright claims on it (if there is not an interesting amount of money involved).

2) We do not have a full updated installer of OS/2 anymore. If eCS disappears, it will be hard to get OS/2 install on real hardware.

So, between the alternatives we have:
Alternative - Create an OS/2 Warp 4.52 Distro.  eComStation is nothing more than Warp 4.52 with a lot of open source software on it, some other private software (installer) and a lot of effort to tweak it to make it work.

The same thing can be recreate to use something similar to UpdCD to create a new OS/2 distro from a OS/2 Warp 4.52 ISO image. Just like Sigurd is doing, the idea will be to have a open/public package that will bundle all OS/2 open source software, and with the use of a legally acquired license of OS/2 Warp 4.52 ISO you can generate your own Distro, which will be interesting to assign a name for it.

The issue with this alternative is that no new license of OS/2 can be sold. Legally it is only an alternative for people that already have a license of "OS/2 Warp 4.52".  But I think that this can be best way to deal if eCS disappear from the point of view of the community.  (Still no solution for corporate customers or people that require new licenses, but today they can still order eCS).

I want to be wrong about this, but I have no evidence that shows me that XEU/Mensys is making progress with eCS. Any other Non-Mensys/XEU solution alternatives ideas around?

Regards

Dave Yeo:
Is it that important that the base operating system be 4.52? Probably a lot more copies of Warp V4 available then 4.52 and it can legally be upgraded to Ver 4.5. Though I guess the big problem is getting multiple cores working on V4.5

Martin Iturbide:
Yes, Warp 4 is more easy to find than version 4.5x, but it is just an idea.

The other crazy idea is to have an organization to buy a lot of 100 Warp 4 boxes (for example), and share that 100 licenses with a registered group of people for a year, since that 100 people will became part of the organization for a period of time... I don't know if the OS/2 license allows you to do that, but that is too crazy. 

It will like Netlabs, OS2VOICE, or OS2World (for example) buying OS/2 license boxes , storing them and giving one to each subscribers for a period of time, and during that period the person will be a "Registered member" of that organization. ... too crazy to work out? I need to read the license agreement again.

Greg Pringle:
I notice the ecomstation.com web site has an "ORDER" button that has a link to "https://shop.xeu.com/"

These would of course be new licenses. Is the concern  that these will not be available?

Martin Iturbide:
Hi Greg

My concern is that there are no real progress with eComStation since Jan 1 of 2014. Suddenly XEU showed up as the owner of eComStation and haven't specified any plans with it.  Menso (Mensys owner) show up at Warpstock 2014 and said that they are still working, but nothing had been announced or showed from their side.  While some of the important drivers developers that used to be hired by Mensys started a new company. That is the source of my concern.

For sure, you can still order eComStation from their site and get licenses, but from the platform point of view, there haven't been progress with eComStation (not a single new release or formal announcement) since Jan of 2014. I think it is time for Mensys/XEU to show us something. But that is my personal opinion. 

Regards

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