Hi
I don't know how I get into this subject by searching on the Internet. On 1998 I was on the University minding my own dumb business and without much knowledge of the OS/2 community. I knew OS/2 at that time, I used Warp 3 but I was not an active member and I never knew about this, so I post it as "funny fact" or "blast from the past".
While on 1998 Lou Gerstner already decided to pull the plug on OS/2, we didn't know about it. IBM didn't go straight to everyone and told us Lou's strategy. Ralph Nader from the other side requested IBM to give away OS/2 source code (or give OS/2 for free) since he noticed that Microsoft was an evil monopoly.
Ralph Nader told "
IBM should consider following the Netscape example and release the source code for OS2, and permit computer users to modify and freely distribute copies of OS2."
At that moment some journalist (ex:
Paul Thurrott) disqualified Ralph almost saying that he does not nothing about computer software. Some OS/2 developer company came out to defend IBM telling that IBM was doing a great job with ISVs on 1998.
Ralph is defined on
wikipedia as:
"Ralph Nader (/ˈneɪdər/, Arabic: رالف نادر; born February 27, 1934)[4][5] is an American political activist of Lebanese origin, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.[6]"
He was a five-time candidate for President of the United States with the democrats... and I don't remember him winning

I do not live on the US, maybe people that remember him have their own political opinions on him. Maybe he was a crazy democrat that wanted all Americans to live naked and smoke pot (joke, I don't really know anything about him). Even the organization he created (
Public Citizen) disassociate away from him.
But today (Ralph Nader is 81 years old) maybe I can say that he had some reason after all.
I just put some links about what I can find about this subject on the wiki:
http://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Ralph_Nader. I want to read more sources about this subject, just for the fun of it.
Regards