OS/2 users of the world: It’s time to pack it up and go home

Some things never go away. One of them is the fervent desire that IBM will release its moribund OS/2 operating system as open source software.

It’s time to give it up, folks. And I say that affectionately as the founding-and-only editor of OS/2 Magazine, published by Miller Freeman from 1994 through 1997.

OS/2 is over, OS/2 is done, OS/2 is obsolete, OS/2 is obsolescent, OS/2 is dead.

This harsh commentary is sparked is a blog post by my dear, dear friend Esther Schindler. Esther, aka “The OS/2 Goddess,” was a frequent contributor to OS/2 Magazine. One of my few regrets about that publication was not giving Esther the regular monthly column she deserved.

Esther’s posting on CIO.com resurrects an old chestnut: “Should IBM’s OS/2 Be Open-Sourced?” She correctly and accurately acknowledges the two main obstacles:

• Why in the world would IBM want to do that?
• And even if they wanted to, it’s not clear that they have the IP rights to do so.

Fantasize for a moment that some executive at IBM says, “Let’s go ahead and open source OS/2.” Think about the time and money it would take to validate the intellectual property rights. Who knows how much of that code was originally co-written with other companies, contractors and so-on? Maybe IBM knows. Maybe not. Certainly OS/2 was written without any thought to open-sourcing it, and so the IP records may not be clear.

In any case, it would take significant due diligence and expensive legal work. Where’s IBM’s return on investment for doing so?

Esther writes that “the committed OS/2 community sent a petition to IBM two years ago, with 11,613 signatures, asking the company to release the OS/2 source code (or whatever part IBM owns) under an open source license.” She says that IBM ignored the petition. I don’t blame them. And now, she says, there’s another petition in the works.

Esther, of course, wants this effort to succeed. But she’s a realist, too. “Do I want OS/2 to be open-sourced? Absolutely. Do I think it’s going to happen? Sadly, I don’t even think that IBM will respond to the users’ petition.”

My heartfelt advice to Esther and her compatriots in the OS/2 community: It’s not going to happen. Move on. It’s over.

They’re not going to move on, of course. But that’s what makes lost causes like OS/2 still blog-worthy, after all these years.