offer - OS/2 for the PDP-11

[Holger Veit]

Dan Gahlinger schrieb:
> I personally have seen cash machines crash that were using OS/2 (a very long time ago)
>
> it used to be every cash machine in the city I live in ran on OS/2, it was a "staple"
> I thought this was widely known.
>   
OS/2 ATMs were common here in the past. Ticket machines at airports also 
sometimes have/had OS/2 in it (e.g. Lufthansa use/used them here).
> there were rumors that IBM was going to open source OS/2, but not sure what came of it, if anything.
>   
Unfortunately, this rumor will unlikely become truth. Certain 
components, namely essential parts of the kernel, as well as many 
\os2\apps, mainly 16 bit stuff, are fully copyrighted by Microsoft and 
others. I have seen the kernel sources. It might be that this no longer 
holds for the 32 bit rewrite of OS/2 for PPC so this maybe can be open 
sourced. The question is what advantage is there for IBM to release it, 
though. IBM still makes money with OS/2, from old customers who still 
have to use it because of odd control software. We have an old backup 
system where the tape library mechanics is managed by an embedded PC 
with OS/2 on it (no TSM backup system!). OS/2 itself still sells as the 
eComStation product by Serenity Systems, so it is not a good idea to 
open-source it from this direction as well.

-- 
Holger