First Call: Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign

By Martin Iturbide

This is something I wanted to start some time ago. There is many OS/2 software around the Internet that had been abandon by its authors. Many software are great products that are still used by many OS/2 users and software that deserves to have further enhancements.

The idea will be in a polite way to ask the developers of this abandon OS/2 software to release the source code of it. Many of they don't code anymore under OS/2 and don't care anymore about it and will have no problem releasing the source code. The benefits of open sourcing their code will be that other OS/2 developers can learn from the code and possible continue their projects.

I had a good experience asking developers to open source their software. I started some years ago the OS/2 gaming site and I also tried to contact the OS/2 abandoned games developers. Much of the developers don't care anymore about the game and gave me freely the source code for their games and let me choose to license to be distribute with them. (You can check out the open sourced OS/2 games here http://www.os2world.com/games/html/opensource.html)

So if you want to help me on this campaign, once you find a OS/2 abandoware program the steps will be:


 * 1) Ask the developer their permission to turn their software Open Source.


 * 1) Ask the developer which license does he prefer to use with his Software. There are several license that the developer can choose. If the developer don't care which license to use you can always suggest the GNU GPL which is very common with Linux and will keep further development of that software to also be open source.


 * 1) Get for the source code


 * 1) Bundle the Source, license text file and the binaries in a single zip file or WarpIn file. If you don't have time you can send to me source code and I will bundle it with the binaries.


 * 1) Distribute the binaries and the source code. There are several ways to distribute a file on the OS/2 community. The most common is to upload the file to hobbes OS/2 Archive. (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/) Check the upload instructions and policies (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/uploadpolicy.html)


 * 1) Announce that the program is now released as Open Source. We want other OS/2 users and developers to get interest on it. Lets post every software we can turn open source on the main OS/2 news site. The most easy way will be to send a news using the OS2World.com News Submition Form (http://http://www.os2world.com/submit_news.php)

Remember that if you need help distributing the files, or bundle them in a single file you can contact me. Many OS/2 (and ex-OS/2) developers don't have time and will send you the files for you to give them some order. I have no problem helping on anything I can, like packaging the files, distribuite them and making the announcements to the OS/2 community.

Wish you luck.