IBM won't open-source OS/2, but one of its best features, SOM, would do fine.
Get over it. We are never going to see OS/2 open-sourced. If
you want to run OS/2 today, the closest you're going to get is
Serenity System's eComStation 2.0 RC4.
But, it just might be possible for Linux desktop users to get one of OS/2's
best features: SOM (System Object Model).
IBM, I'm told by
developers who should know, still has all of SOM's source code and it all
belongs to IBM. It's because IBM
doesn't have all the code for OS/2 and some of it belongs to Microsoft that
IBM open-sourcing
OS/2 has proven to be
a futile hope.
Of course, many of you are asking, "SOM, What's the
heck is SOM?" I'll tell you. It's a
CORBA object-oriented shared library.
Those of you who aren't programmers are doubtlessly staring cross-eyed at the screen
right about now. For you: SOM is an easy-to-use universal programming library
that both KDE and GNOME developers could use
to create programs that would work in any Linux desktop environment.
Read the full story on DesktopLinux.com.
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