#121 From: "Adrian Gschwend" <ktk@...>
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 2:58 am
Subject: OSFree and our future netlabsorg
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Hi all,
This is a rather long mail but please take the time and read it
carefuly if you are interested in the future of OS/2 and whatever we
make out of it...
I would like to share my thoughs about what happened the past days. As
netlabs.org founder and OS/2 advocate I am very interested in the
future of OS/2 so let me give some ideas about what we can do in the
future and what we shouldn't in my opinion..
First about OSFree. To be honest I was impressed by the look and feel
of the package. It very much looks like an original IBM package but
it's quite 100% sure that the binary files are based on "leaked" IBM
OS/2 source. The availability of this source is a well known "secret"
but that does not make them legal unfortunately. I won't got into more
details about if it's really leaked source or not, Ltning made this
clear already.
Whoever did this seems to be a skilled programmer and deserves respect
about the coding-skills he/she/they got.
BUT: if you do this you should keep this simply for *you* as a *case
study*. It's definitely *not* a good idea to make this stuff public,
even if a lot of people like the idea itself (the idea of a free OS/2
clone done without IBM). I like this idea as well, see my comments
about this later in this mail.
The good thing about what happened is the big interest in the idea of
the project itself. It shows that the OS/2 community has a big interest
in creating a future without IBM. I think about that for some years
already and I'm definitely not the only one. Several people and several
groups thought about that, some started to do something, others just
talked.
Some of you now want to really work on a free replacement of OS/2.
based on it's original ideas and concept of the kernel. It's for sure
up to each individual if he/she wants to participate in such a project
but I would like to share some thoughts why we shouldn't do this right
now without going into more details:
Back in the 80ies IBM and Microsoft started to design an operating
system. Some weeks ago someone posted a statement about OS/2 which is
very important in my opinion:
"'OS/2 was _Designed_ instead of _Evolved_"
I think that pretty much gets the point. IBM thought about everything
they implemented in OS/2. Before you really start to work on such a
project you should read the book "Design of OS/2" from Mike Kogan, the
chief architect of OS/2 2.0. In this book he writes exactly why IBM
decided to do OS/2 the way it works now. The decissions were made
because they made sense at this time. They wrote it in C and assembly
because c++ was not available yet at this time (not really at least).
The memory management made sense for the platform the have choosen
(Intel . They had 16-bit parts in it because they told it works as
it should and we can replace it later (and did so for some parts).
I've read this book this summer after I got it from Mike Kogan (yes,
signed ) and it was really a plesure to read it. But everyone who
really thinks about the book has to come to the conclusion that it does
not make sense to do exactly the same operating system again.
(OT: netlabs.org will most probably get the license of this book, that
means we can publish it for free on the net at HTML and PDF version as
soon as we get the rights on it).
If you don't have the book you should at least read Michal Necasek's
excellent document about the history of OS/2 he wrote for OS/2 Voice:
http://www.os2voice.org/VNL/past_issues ... newsf4.htm (there are
more articles, check the other newsletters as well)
-> Don't make the mistake and rewrite technology which was up to date
15 years ago. Linux is doing that already, that's bad enough )
For sure the OS/2 Kernel is still pretty nice but don't forget that
OS/2 got it's problems in other areas: Device drivers and applications.
I personaly don't need a lot of Win32 applications but some people do.
Odin proved that it's possible to implement a great Win32
implementation on OS/2 and Achim also told that something similar could
be the future of OS/2 as we like it.
Achim proposed a uKernel (read microkernel if you don't know that
which could run OS/2 applications as well as other binaries. Just think
about an ELF loader for Linux/Unix stuff, a JVM for java applications
and so on. To be honest I don't have a lot of know how about uKernel
concepts but we *do* have people who got that.
People like Sander, Knut, Achim, Michal, Holger, Brian, <enter your
favourite /2 programmer here>... have a lot more experience in design
of operating system and hardware than most of us do. Hardware will
change very fast in the future so we need new concepts for an alternate
operating system (think about 64-bit processors). If people write Win32
driver but not more we could think about how we can implement them in a
new OS to get good support for hardware. If some applications simply
need to run on an OS go get some respect let's implement a subsystem
for this platform. If we want to keep our loved WPS make sure that we
can run PM on top of this OS as well.
What I want to say is very simple: We have to think about a new
operating system before we start to write it. I respect your effort and
your fear about running out of time. But we will lose more if we invest
a lot of time into something that has no future.
I invest a lot of time into netlabs.org because I want to have a future
for all the PM-based applications I have. I love the concept of the WPS
but I also see that the technology in it get's old (SOM is more or less
a CORBA implementation for example and CORBA got a lot of enhancements
and improvements the past years). So let's do a new, free OS/2 like OS
but let's do it with a vision which makes sense. Think before you code
and don't risk the future of this idea because it's based on illegal
sourcecode.
Even if a lot of us don't like IBM anymore it's still the only company
which can help us. IBM changed a lot the past years (regarding open
source) and because of this I still think it's not impossible to get at
last some parts of OS/2 one day (we would need at least PM source for
example). But if some OS/2 freaks start to release illegal binaries
based on sourcecode they don't own IBM won't trust the community
anymore at all in the future.
I could write a lot more about what I have in mind and I will do that
if I find the time (I'm still a poor student which is busy all the time
but I thought it's important to write down some thoughts now.
We have a lot of exiting new developers in east europe, some of you are
very skilled. Don't stop coding on your ideas but also don't risk legal
actions against you. The whole OS/2 community needs your programming
skills in the future and you can lose other people respect very fast if
you are too much into grayzone stuff. So if some parts of your work are
done on IBM OS/2 sourcecode keep it for your own. Use it as a case
study and start to implement something else as open source.
Just some ideas: BSD IP Stack, XFree86 4.x binary driver GRADD
interface (imagine 3D, 2D and TV support , support Holger Veit in
his efforts of adding BSD methods to OS/2, support the Everblue team
(hi Nuke , learn how to debug Win32 applications in Odin and so on.
I hope Achim and some other developers will present their ideas in the
near future (well at least some of them will, I'm quite sure). Noone
can be forced to join their ideas but in my opinion it would make more
sense to wait for them.
that's it for now, sorry for the long mail. More will follow @
netlabs.org in the next weeks
cu
Adrian
--
Adrian Gschwend
@ OS/2 Netlabs
ICQ: 22419590
ktk@...
-------
The OS/2 OpenSource Project:
http://www.netlabs.org
Part 5 - Feb 21 2002
Re: Part 5
#122 From: "pinoozzyid" <pinoozzyid@...>
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 3:41 am
Subject: Re: building a kernel from scratch or not pinoozzyid
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--- In osFree@y..., "Bartosz Tomasik (Bart/2)" <bart2@a...> wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Feb 2002 14:02:51 -0000, maratcolumn1 wrote:
>
> >What are driver options for ReactOS? Will it be driver-compatible to
> >NT or something else? (Probably this must be in the ReactOS FAQ).
> >
> >Kernel of NT clone... There's a lot of irony in it if you know the
> >full story. However, this must be the closest kernel to OS/2.
>
> we've just got a discussion about it on pl.comp.os2.os2 (kernel for
OS/2), and many
> people advised closer look at http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
>
> dunno anything about it yet.... just checking
> -------------------------------------------------
> Bart/2 irc:Ihsahn Bart2@a... UIN:50890586
> Asu'a Programmers Group http://www.asua.org.pl
> TeamOS/2 Polska http://www.teamos2.org.pl
As part as some work I did for the FreeOS group I managed to download
and install Hurd on a ThinkPad T21, still is there. I downloaded a lot
of documentation and I even read a lot of it. To me Hurd represented a
good microkernel alternative to build a free OS/2, but after two years
of talking nobody in the group seemed motivated to help anymore so I
stoped and dropped out of the list.
The good things were that Hurd made it easy to develop and test new
servers that could represent the different services of OS/2. It's a
Unix based on Mach 3.0 microkernel, just like the new MacOS X, without
the BSD part. The driver support is based on Linux kernel support v
2.0.x, so it's old by now and is static linked, so if you need to
support a new device you need to recompile the kernel.
The bad thing is that Mach 3 is as old or even older than the OS/2
kernel, is "slow" since you need a lot of context switching.
The other good thing about using Hurd is the fact that using the
design developed for OS/2 for PPC you save yourself a lot of work if
you just follow and implement.
The mailing list is not very active and I'm still waiting for them to
tell me if there was ever any work done on porting the JFS file system
to Hurd (I know somebody showed interest right after the sources were
made public)
I also looked into AtheOS and downloaded the sources, just to look at
them, the problem here is that the author doesn't want any
modifications to the core of the system, therefore we should think
about making a parallel branch of development.
So you see, two years and no one line of code because we never agreed
on anything and by now I'm tired and glad to see some work done in a
free OS/2. We really need MMPM2 fixed (not changed) and support for
hardware accelerated 3D and antialiased PM, IPv6 and a new but
compatible DD model.
Leonardo Pino
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 3:41 am
Subject: Re: building a kernel from scratch or not pinoozzyid
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--- In osFree@y..., "Bartosz Tomasik (Bart/2)" <bart2@a...> wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Feb 2002 14:02:51 -0000, maratcolumn1 wrote:
>
> >What are driver options for ReactOS? Will it be driver-compatible to
> >NT or something else? (Probably this must be in the ReactOS FAQ).
> >
> >Kernel of NT clone... There's a lot of irony in it if you know the
> >full story. However, this must be the closest kernel to OS/2.
>
> we've just got a discussion about it on pl.comp.os2.os2 (kernel for
OS/2), and many
> people advised closer look at http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
>
> dunno anything about it yet.... just checking
> -------------------------------------------------
> Bart/2 irc:Ihsahn Bart2@a... UIN:50890586
> Asu'a Programmers Group http://www.asua.org.pl
> TeamOS/2 Polska http://www.teamos2.org.pl
As part as some work I did for the FreeOS group I managed to download
and install Hurd on a ThinkPad T21, still is there. I downloaded a lot
of documentation and I even read a lot of it. To me Hurd represented a
good microkernel alternative to build a free OS/2, but after two years
of talking nobody in the group seemed motivated to help anymore so I
stoped and dropped out of the list.
The good things were that Hurd made it easy to develop and test new
servers that could represent the different services of OS/2. It's a
Unix based on Mach 3.0 microkernel, just like the new MacOS X, without
the BSD part. The driver support is based on Linux kernel support v
2.0.x, so it's old by now and is static linked, so if you need to
support a new device you need to recompile the kernel.
The bad thing is that Mach 3 is as old or even older than the OS/2
kernel, is "slow" since you need a lot of context switching.
The other good thing about using Hurd is the fact that using the
design developed for OS/2 for PPC you save yourself a lot of work if
you just follow and implement.
The mailing list is not very active and I'm still waiting for them to
tell me if there was ever any work done on porting the JFS file system
to Hurd (I know somebody showed interest right after the sources were
made public)
I also looked into AtheOS and downloaded the sources, just to look at
them, the problem here is that the author doesn't want any
modifications to the core of the system, therefore we should think
about making a parallel branch of development.
So you see, two years and no one line of code because we never agreed
on anything and by now I'm tired and glad to see some work done in a
free OS/2. We really need MMPM2 fixed (not changed) and support for
hardware accelerated 3D and antialiased PM, IPv6 and a new but
compatible DD model.
Leonardo Pino
Re: Part 5
#123 From: "pinoozzyid" <pinoozzyid@...>
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 3:18 am
Subject: Re: Work to do - osFree/CMD - Sign up ! pinoozzyid
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--- In osFree@y..., "criguada@l..." <criguada@l...> wrote:
> Hi Herwig,
>
> > > These questions come from a real example: I'd like to offer
myself as
> > > coder for TREE.EXE (to begin),
> >
> > There is a perfect TREE replacement (better output, same switch plus
> > some more switches) in OS2CLU pack from Jonathan de Poyne Pollard.
>
> I know. The problem with JdeBP tools is that they're free to use, _NOT_
> opensource.
>
> However, we should definitely try to contact him, since he has written
> not only these tools, but also a complete 32-bit replacement for the
> ancient VIO*, MOU*, etc. APIs.
>
> Also I know for sure he is developing a 32bit replacement for CMD.EXE.
>
> If he agrees about helping osFree, and to make his tools opensource,
> this would be a very good start.
>
> His address is <J.deBoynePollard@t...>. JMA??
>
> Bye
>
> Cris
I know that the author was contacted and all but let me say that you
shouldn't get into writting a CMD replacement, because it has been
done already. It's based on the 32 bit extentions that were developed
for OS/2 for PPC and I have it installed on and old Warp 3.0 and it
works like a charm.
Let's not reinvent the wheel. The URL to the page is:
http://homepages.tesco.net./~J.deBoyneP ... s/clu.html
Leonardo Pino
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 3:18 am
Subject: Re: Work to do - osFree/CMD - Sign up ! pinoozzyid
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--- In osFree@y..., "criguada@l..." <criguada@l...> wrote:
> Hi Herwig,
>
> > > These questions come from a real example: I'd like to offer
myself as
> > > coder for TREE.EXE (to begin),
> >
> > There is a perfect TREE replacement (better output, same switch plus
> > some more switches) in OS2CLU pack from Jonathan de Poyne Pollard.
>
> I know. The problem with JdeBP tools is that they're free to use, _NOT_
> opensource.
>
> However, we should definitely try to contact him, since he has written
> not only these tools, but also a complete 32-bit replacement for the
> ancient VIO*, MOU*, etc. APIs.
>
> Also I know for sure he is developing a 32bit replacement for CMD.EXE.
>
> If he agrees about helping osFree, and to make his tools opensource,
> this would be a very good start.
>
> His address is <J.deBoynePollard@t...>. JMA??
>
> Bye
>
> Cris
I know that the author was contacted and all but let me say that you
shouldn't get into writting a CMD replacement, because it has been
done already. It's based on the 32 bit extentions that were developed
for OS/2 for PPC and I have it installed on and old Warp 3.0 and it
works like a charm.
Let's not reinvent the wheel. The URL to the page is:
http://homepages.tesco.net./~J.deBoyneP ... s/clu.html
Leonardo Pino
Re: Part 5
#124 From: "pinoozzyid" <pinoozzyid@...>
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 4:03 am
Subject: Re: OSFree and our future pinoozzyid
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--- In osFree@y..., "Adrian Gschwend" <ktk@d...> wrote:
> Hi all,
Hi, and thanks for your work on netlabs, we just need now to revive EDM/2.
>
> The good thing about what happened is the big interest in the idea of
> the project itself. It shows that the OS/2 community has a big interest
> in creating a future without IBM. I think about that for some years
> already and I'm definitely not the only one. Several people and several
> groups thought about that, some started to do something, others just
> talked.
>
Most of the people here didn't know about FreeOS. I joined the group
since the very begining and after two years of talk and a lot of
learning on my part I decided to get away from it (details on my other
post) because clearly the group didn't have the programming strength
to take on project like this. I was ashame when after few days of the
dead of BeOS there were at least two groups writing code for a
replacement and we, after two years were still talking about if we
should start from a microkernel or if we could just write an OS/2
personality on top Linux (that would really suck)
> -> Don't make the mistake and rewrite technology which was up to date
> 15 years ago. Linux is doing that already, that's bad enough )
>
> For sure the OS/2 Kernel is still pretty nice but don't forget that
> OS/2 got it's problems in other areas: Device drivers and applications.
Your argument is not realy valid here since Windows XP kernel is based
on NT kernel witch is just as old as OS/2 kernel, then you got a brand
new MacOS X based on Mach 3.0 and you could find traces of Mach 3.0,
all the way back to pre OS/2 2.0 era (not very new) and BSD, well I
won't even get into that one. OS/2 for PPC was based on Mach 3.0 and
that was back in 1994-95.
My point is that to be an old kernel is not a bad thing per se. What
is important is to have modern services on top of it, things like the
DD model used on MacOS X object oriented and everything, things like
Quarz to support new levels on the interfaces.
If Linux is doing well with a Unix kernel and bad multitasking, it
only means that how old the kernel is; is not the problem.
> Just think
> about an ELF loader for Linux/Unix stuff, a JVM for java applications
> and so on.
I think Timur is working or thinking about doing something on this
direction, maybe it was all the way around.
Leonardo Pino
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 4:03 am
Subject: Re: OSFree and our future pinoozzyid
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--- In osFree@y..., "Adrian Gschwend" <ktk@d...> wrote:
> Hi all,
Hi, and thanks for your work on netlabs, we just need now to revive EDM/2.
>
> The good thing about what happened is the big interest in the idea of
> the project itself. It shows that the OS/2 community has a big interest
> in creating a future without IBM. I think about that for some years
> already and I'm definitely not the only one. Several people and several
> groups thought about that, some started to do something, others just
> talked.
>
Most of the people here didn't know about FreeOS. I joined the group
since the very begining and after two years of talk and a lot of
learning on my part I decided to get away from it (details on my other
post) because clearly the group didn't have the programming strength
to take on project like this. I was ashame when after few days of the
dead of BeOS there were at least two groups writing code for a
replacement and we, after two years were still talking about if we
should start from a microkernel or if we could just write an OS/2
personality on top Linux (that would really suck)
> -> Don't make the mistake and rewrite technology which was up to date
> 15 years ago. Linux is doing that already, that's bad enough )
>
> For sure the OS/2 Kernel is still pretty nice but don't forget that
> OS/2 got it's problems in other areas: Device drivers and applications.
Your argument is not realy valid here since Windows XP kernel is based
on NT kernel witch is just as old as OS/2 kernel, then you got a brand
new MacOS X based on Mach 3.0 and you could find traces of Mach 3.0,
all the way back to pre OS/2 2.0 era (not very new) and BSD, well I
won't even get into that one. OS/2 for PPC was based on Mach 3.0 and
that was back in 1994-95.
My point is that to be an old kernel is not a bad thing per se. What
is important is to have modern services on top of it, things like the
DD model used on MacOS X object oriented and everything, things like
Quarz to support new levels on the interfaces.
If Linux is doing well with a Unix kernel and bad multitasking, it
only means that how old the kernel is; is not the problem.
> Just think
> about an ELF loader for Linux/Unix stuff, a JVM for java applications
> and so on.
I think Timur is working or thinking about doing something on this
direction, maybe it was all the way around.
Leonardo Pino
Re: Part 5
#125 From: Herwig Bauernfeind <herwig.bauernfeind@...>
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 9:40 am
Subject: Re: where is the crew? taxwarriorfr...
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> > perhaps could someone of the crew bring light into the whole story?
> >
> > where is the crew? how many?
> >
>
> Does it matter?
Yes, I think so.
Regards,
Herwig
--
+---------------------------------------------------
| Mag. Herwig Bauernfeind - Dfb. J.Bfd. - Accountant
| Martin-Luther-Str.12, A-9300 St.Veit/Glan, Austria
| Telefon: ++43 4212 2028 Telefax: ++43 4212 2028 76
| herwig.bauernfeind@... - Fidonet: 2:313/41.5
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 9:40 am
Subject: Re: where is the crew? taxwarriorfr...
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> > perhaps could someone of the crew bring light into the whole story?
> >
> > where is the crew? how many?
> >
>
> Does it matter?
Yes, I think so.
Regards,
Herwig
--
+---------------------------------------------------
| Mag. Herwig Bauernfeind - Dfb. J.Bfd. - Accountant
| Martin-Luther-Str.12, A-9300 St.Veit/Glan, Austria
| Telefon: ++43 4212 2028 Telefax: ++43 4212 2028 76
| herwig.bauernfeind@... - Fidonet: 2:313/41.5
Re: Part 5
#126 From: Herwig Bauernfeind <herwig.bauernfeind@...>
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 9:40 am
Subject: Re: osFree/CMD taxwarriorfr...
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JMA schrieb:
> Go ahead. All the GNUxxxx packages I have seen on hobbes have source code in
them and as long as
> we respect their GNU copyright we should use them.
>
> This is important, I think it would be positive if we mixed in a lot of GNU
sources in our project.
> It would stop others from reusing it in a way we may not want them to.
>
> Are you able to sign up for developing an app ?
No, sorry, I don't speak C, only REXX and (a little) Pascal.
Regards,
Herwig
--
+---------------------------------------------------
| Mag. Herwig Bauernfeind - Dfb. J.Bfd. - Accountant
| Martin-Luther-Str.12, A-9300 St.Veit/Glan, Austria
| Telefon: ++43 4212 2028 Telefax: ++43 4212 2028 76
| herwig.bauernfeind@... - Fidonet: 2:313/41.5
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 9:40 am
Subject: Re: osFree/CMD taxwarriorfr...
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JMA schrieb:
> Go ahead. All the GNUxxxx packages I have seen on hobbes have source code in
them and as long as
> we respect their GNU copyright we should use them.
>
> This is important, I think it would be positive if we mixed in a lot of GNU
sources in our project.
> It would stop others from reusing it in a way we may not want them to.
>
> Are you able to sign up for developing an app ?
No, sorry, I don't speak C, only REXX and (a little) Pascal.
Regards,
Herwig
--
+---------------------------------------------------
| Mag. Herwig Bauernfeind - Dfb. J.Bfd. - Accountant
| Martin-Luther-Str.12, A-9300 St.Veit/Glan, Austria
| Telefon: ++43 4212 2028 Telefax: ++43 4212 2028 76
| herwig.bauernfeind@... - Fidonet: 2:313/41.5
Re: Part 5
#127 From: "khaverblad" <kim@...>
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 9:42 am
Subject: osFree download khaverblad
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Well, I've uploaded the two current available files of osFree to:
http://www.os2world.com/osFree/files/osf/
so people still can dl it.
/Kim
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 9:42 am
Subject: osFree download khaverblad
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Well, I've uploaded the two current available files of osFree to:
http://www.os2world.com/osFree/files/osf/
so people still can dl it.
/Kim
Re: Part 5
#128 From: "criguada@..." <criguada@...>
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 10:52 am
Subject: Re: Well criguada
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Hi Adrian,
> few already a rich set of utilities available already, why reinvent the
> wheel,
> eg command line replacements eg source not included but I am sure if
> someone contacted the author
>
> http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-viewer ... 2clu03.zip
The author has already been contacted. I'm waiting for his reply.
Note however that we don't just need "a replacement", but we need a
compatible one. Read previous messages on this matter if you want to
know what I mean.
Bye
Cris
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 10:52 am
Subject: Re: Well criguada
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Hi Adrian,
> few already a rich set of utilities available already, why reinvent the
> wheel,
> eg command line replacements eg source not included but I am sure if
> someone contacted the author
>
> http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-viewer ... 2clu03.zip
The author has already been contacted. I'm waiting for his reply.
Note however that we don't just need "a replacement", but we need a
compatible one. Read previous messages on this matter if you want to
know what I mean.
Bye
Cris
Re: Part 5
#129 From: "Adrian Gschwend" <ktk@...>
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 12:26 pm
Subject: Re: Re: OSFree and our future netlabsorg
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On Thu, 21 Feb 2002 01:03:53 -0000, pinoozzyid wrote:
>Hi, and thanks for your work on netlabs, we just need now to revive EDM/2.
Yeah I know, tell that VerySign. I am in contact with the current owner
of the domain but his old email-address is not valid anymore -> he
cannot update anything at verysign.
>Your argument is not realy valid here since Windows XP kernel is based
>on NT kernel witch is just as old as OS/2 kernel, then you got a brand
>new MacOS X based on Mach 3.0 and you could find traces of Mach 3.0,
>all the way back to pre OS/2 2.0 era (not very new) and BSD, well I
>won't even get into that one. OS/2 for PPC was based on Mach 3.0 and
>that was back in 1994-95.
that's all true but still there are other microkernel concepts out
there which could be of interest. The OS design envolved like other
software as well so we should at least think about other ways before we
do something. That's all I wanted to say. I don't think that an old
kernel is bad per se, not at all.
>I think Timur is working or thinking about doing something on this
>direction, maybe it was all the way around.
IIRC he plans it on top of Linux which is not really an option for me.
But as Holger wrote quite clearly in another mail: Everyone is free to
do whatever he/she wants.
cu
Adrian
--
Adrian Gschwend
@ OS/2 Netlabs
ICQ: 22419590
ktk@...
-------
The OS/2 OpenSource Project:
http://www.netlabs.org
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 12:26 pm
Subject: Re: Re: OSFree and our future netlabsorg
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On Thu, 21 Feb 2002 01:03:53 -0000, pinoozzyid wrote:
>Hi, and thanks for your work on netlabs, we just need now to revive EDM/2.
Yeah I know, tell that VerySign. I am in contact with the current owner
of the domain but his old email-address is not valid anymore -> he
cannot update anything at verysign.
>Your argument is not realy valid here since Windows XP kernel is based
>on NT kernel witch is just as old as OS/2 kernel, then you got a brand
>new MacOS X based on Mach 3.0 and you could find traces of Mach 3.0,
>all the way back to pre OS/2 2.0 era (not very new) and BSD, well I
>won't even get into that one. OS/2 for PPC was based on Mach 3.0 and
>that was back in 1994-95.
that's all true but still there are other microkernel concepts out
there which could be of interest. The OS design envolved like other
software as well so we should at least think about other ways before we
do something. That's all I wanted to say. I don't think that an old
kernel is bad per se, not at all.
>I think Timur is working or thinking about doing something on this
>direction, maybe it was all the way around.
IIRC he plans it on top of Linux which is not really an option for me.
But as Holger wrote quite clearly in another mail: Everyone is free to
do whatever he/she wants.
cu
Adrian
--
Adrian Gschwend
@ OS/2 Netlabs
ICQ: 22419590
ktk@...
-------
The OS/2 OpenSource Project:
http://www.netlabs.org
Re: Part 5
#130 From: "JMA" <mail@...>
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 2:01 pm
Subject: Re: OSFree and our future mailjmase
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On Thu, 21 Feb 2002 00:58:57 +0100 (CET), Adrian Gschwend wrote:
>OS/2 source. The availability of this source is a well known "secret"
>but that does not make them legal unfortunately. I won't got into more
>details about if it's really leaked source or not, Ltning made this
>clear already.
>
This talk is dangerous.
Its as illegal to posses these sources as to build and release them.
Also, as I said to Achim, just the possibility that he have seen the
sources would disqualify any OS/2 compatible product Innotec
would try to release (at least in US laws).
We have to accept the source are there but dont go around saying,
"I have them but I dont use them, so I'm no crook".
That would NOT hold in court.
>Back in the 80ies IBM and Microsoft started to design an operating
>system. Some weeks ago someone posted a statement about OS/2 which is
>very important in my opinion:
>
>"'OS/2 was _Designed_ instead of _Evolved_"
>
<BIG SNIP>
>
>-> Don't make the mistake and rewrite technology which was up to date
>15 years ago. Linux is doing that already, that's bad enough )
>
There is a difference that almost completly destroys your arguments:
When OS/2 2.0 was designed and a few years ahead the team had one
of the largest companies in the world backing them up. Also OS/2 was
at thet time extremly important for IBM.
I heard quotes that IBM spent almost $1 billion on OS2PPC !
That would probably amount to almost unlimited hardware,
support personell and a chance to get the best developers.
Any open source project the OS/2 community could ever pull through
might get donations of some 10.000 of dollars.
We cannot use IBM's method since there is neither time nor money !!!!
>For sure the OS/2 Kernel is still pretty nice but don't forget that
>OS/2 got it's problems in other areas: Device drivers and applications.
>I personaly don't need a lot of Win32 applications but some people do.
>Odin proved that it's possible to implement a great Win32
>implementation on OS/2 and Achim also told that something similar could
>be the future of OS/2 as we like it.
>
Should we do a 1:1 copy of the OS/2 kernel ?
No need !
Should we do a 1:1 copy of the CPI/PM/WPS API ?
As close as possible, or we could start thinking about Linux or Windows.
You say you dont want to run Win32 apps. Then you have to have an
os that runs the OS/2 apps we already have. There will not be a huge
surge to rewrite lots of OS/2 apps.
A relativly well designed API layer would be easy to port to another
kernel. Thats the whole point of having an API and not letting apps
talk directly to the kernel.
Build that and you can start mapping it to the Linux kernel or whatever
superduper wizbang modern kernel you want.
Also, the tools that I suggested will be able to test and debug quite easily
on - IBM OS/2. I would not recommend testing on some halfported
kernel...
>Achim proposed a uKernel (read microkernel if you don't know that
>which could run OS/2 applications as well as other binaries. Just think
>about an ELF loader for Linux/Unix stuff, a JVM for java applications
>and so on. To be honest I don't have a lot of know how about uKernel
>concepts but we *do* have people who got that.
>
As a former member of the FreeOS team (a one that did find things out):
A microkernel is capable of almost nothing !
The reason to have a microkernel is to remove hardware dependencies
from the real kernel. Thats why OS2PPC was mk. I'm told it was even
crosscompiled on intel without changes.
You need a *real* kernel ontop of it. Someone has to write that kernel and
then ensure the kernel supports the full OS/2 api, a full JVM, the full
Linux API, the full Win32 API etc, etc.
This is work for at team with at least the OS2PPC size and money.
WE MUST STOP THIS FREEOS DREAMS.
Me must use the time and resources we have !
>People like Sander, Knut, Achim, Michal, Holger, Brian, <enter your
>favourite /2 programmer here>... have a lot more experience in design
>of operating system and hardware than most of us do. Hardware will
>change very fast in the future so we need new concepts for an alternate
>operating system (think about 64-bit processors). If people write Win32
>driver but not more we could think about how we can implement them in a
>new OS to get good support for hardware.
Just implementing drivers is not that easy. If it was we could implement a
Win32 driver layer for OS/2 and be done with driver problems. Its lots
of work and - a kernel is intimatly connected to its drivers model.
You dont design a kernel without a drivers model !
>If some applications simply need to run on an OS go get some respect '
>let's implement a subsystem for this platform. If we want to keep our
>loved WPS make sure that we can run PM on top of this OS as well.
>
You know the work that has been put down on Odin. To date Odin is
the biggest opensource project seen on OS/2. It has a full comercial
OS with similar origin as Windows. Still Odin is far from complete...
Dont missunderstand me, Odin is great, but it shows how long it
would take to do that, a linux layer, supporting drivers from these
OS'es and giving the GUI apps a complete environment to run in.
>What I want to say is very simple: We have to think about a new
>operating system before we start to write it. I respect your effort and
>your fear about running out of time. But we will lose more if we invest
>a lot of time into something that has no future.
>
Since in part I have to agree with you I suggested that we start with
the command line tools. These tools will be required undependant
of what plattform (kernel) they will live upon. They all use the CPI
and (kbd/mou/vio) API's that MUST exist in a near 100% compatible
way if we want to be able to run any OS/2 app untop of anything
else than IBM OS/2.
The kernel is an open question but its not a "just pick a kernel, fix
a few lines, recompile - voila".
>Even if a lot of us don't like IBM anymore it's still the only company
>which can help us. IBM changed a lot the past years (regarding open
>source) and because of this I still think it's not impossible to get at
>last some parts of OS/2 one day (we would need at least PM source for
>example). But if some OS/2 freaks start to release illegal binaries
>based on sourcecode they don't own IBM won't trust the community
>anymore at all in the future.
>
Get real, why did Serenity manage to do what they did ?
Money !
To get IBM to opensource OS/2 there is only one thing that would
have any influence (negative or positive)...
>We have a lot of exiting new developers in east europe, some of you are
>very skilled. Don't stop coding on your ideas but also don't risk legal
>actions against you. The whole OS/2 community needs your programming
>skills in the future and you can lose other people respect very fast if
>you are too much into grayzone stuff. So if some parts of your work are
>done on IBM OS/2 sourcecode keep it for your own. Use it as a case
>study and start to implement something else as open source.
>
What you are saying is as illegal as recompiling and
releasing unmodified IBM sources !
Either we all agree that using IBM sources is OK (its not) or we stop
talking like this !
You people still thinks its OK to have it but not use it !!
>Just some ideas: BSD IP Stack, XFree86 4.x binary driver GRADD
>interface (imagine 3D, 2D and TV support , support Holger Veit in
>his efforts of adding BSD methods to OS/2, support the Everblue team
>(hi Nuke , learn how to debug Win32 applications in Odin and so on.
>
We set out people to do XFree stuff, BSD methods, Everblue, debugging
Odin and such. All this requires IBM OS/2 to run on.
Updates to the closedsource IBM OS/2 is no more !
It may not be as sexy to build a CPI layer but that will give us the chance
to do what you want in the future.
>I hope Achim and some other developers will present their ideas in the
>near future (well at least some of them will, I'm quite sure). Noone
>can be forced to join their ideas but in my opinion it would make more
>sense to wait for them.
>
My recomendation is quite clear:
*** Join a project that have have at least one foot in reality. ***
Btw: I would love to be proven wrong.
I would love to see a opensource mk based OS that runs unmodified
OS/2 and Linux binaries with a mixed X and PM/WPS interface.
So please, prove me wrong.
Sincerely
JMA
Development and Consulting
John Martin , jma@...
==================================
Website: http://www.jma.se/
email: mail@...
Phone: 46-(0)70-6278410
==================================
Date: Thu Feb 21, 2002 2:01 pm
Subject: Re: OSFree and our future mailjmase
Offline Offline
Send Email Send Email
Invite to Yahoo! 360° Invite to Yahoo! 360°
On Thu, 21 Feb 2002 00:58:57 +0100 (CET), Adrian Gschwend wrote:
>OS/2 source. The availability of this source is a well known "secret"
>but that does not make them legal unfortunately. I won't got into more
>details about if it's really leaked source or not, Ltning made this
>clear already.
>
This talk is dangerous.
Its as illegal to posses these sources as to build and release them.
Also, as I said to Achim, just the possibility that he have seen the
sources would disqualify any OS/2 compatible product Innotec
would try to release (at least in US laws).
We have to accept the source are there but dont go around saying,
"I have them but I dont use them, so I'm no crook".
That would NOT hold in court.
>Back in the 80ies IBM and Microsoft started to design an operating
>system. Some weeks ago someone posted a statement about OS/2 which is
>very important in my opinion:
>
>"'OS/2 was _Designed_ instead of _Evolved_"
>
<BIG SNIP>
>
>-> Don't make the mistake and rewrite technology which was up to date
>15 years ago. Linux is doing that already, that's bad enough )
>
There is a difference that almost completly destroys your arguments:
When OS/2 2.0 was designed and a few years ahead the team had one
of the largest companies in the world backing them up. Also OS/2 was
at thet time extremly important for IBM.
I heard quotes that IBM spent almost $1 billion on OS2PPC !
That would probably amount to almost unlimited hardware,
support personell and a chance to get the best developers.
Any open source project the OS/2 community could ever pull through
might get donations of some 10.000 of dollars.
We cannot use IBM's method since there is neither time nor money !!!!
>For sure the OS/2 Kernel is still pretty nice but don't forget that
>OS/2 got it's problems in other areas: Device drivers and applications.
>I personaly don't need a lot of Win32 applications but some people do.
>Odin proved that it's possible to implement a great Win32
>implementation on OS/2 and Achim also told that something similar could
>be the future of OS/2 as we like it.
>
Should we do a 1:1 copy of the OS/2 kernel ?
No need !
Should we do a 1:1 copy of the CPI/PM/WPS API ?
As close as possible, or we could start thinking about Linux or Windows.
You say you dont want to run Win32 apps. Then you have to have an
os that runs the OS/2 apps we already have. There will not be a huge
surge to rewrite lots of OS/2 apps.
A relativly well designed API layer would be easy to port to another
kernel. Thats the whole point of having an API and not letting apps
talk directly to the kernel.
Build that and you can start mapping it to the Linux kernel or whatever
superduper wizbang modern kernel you want.
Also, the tools that I suggested will be able to test and debug quite easily
on - IBM OS/2. I would not recommend testing on some halfported
kernel...
>Achim proposed a uKernel (read microkernel if you don't know that
>which could run OS/2 applications as well as other binaries. Just think
>about an ELF loader for Linux/Unix stuff, a JVM for java applications
>and so on. To be honest I don't have a lot of know how about uKernel
>concepts but we *do* have people who got that.
>
As a former member of the FreeOS team (a one that did find things out):
A microkernel is capable of almost nothing !
The reason to have a microkernel is to remove hardware dependencies
from the real kernel. Thats why OS2PPC was mk. I'm told it was even
crosscompiled on intel without changes.
You need a *real* kernel ontop of it. Someone has to write that kernel and
then ensure the kernel supports the full OS/2 api, a full JVM, the full
Linux API, the full Win32 API etc, etc.
This is work for at team with at least the OS2PPC size and money.
WE MUST STOP THIS FREEOS DREAMS.
Me must use the time and resources we have !
>People like Sander, Knut, Achim, Michal, Holger, Brian, <enter your
>favourite /2 programmer here>... have a lot more experience in design
>of operating system and hardware than most of us do. Hardware will
>change very fast in the future so we need new concepts for an alternate
>operating system (think about 64-bit processors). If people write Win32
>driver but not more we could think about how we can implement them in a
>new OS to get good support for hardware.
Just implementing drivers is not that easy. If it was we could implement a
Win32 driver layer for OS/2 and be done with driver problems. Its lots
of work and - a kernel is intimatly connected to its drivers model.
You dont design a kernel without a drivers model !
>If some applications simply need to run on an OS go get some respect '
>let's implement a subsystem for this platform. If we want to keep our
>loved WPS make sure that we can run PM on top of this OS as well.
>
You know the work that has been put down on Odin. To date Odin is
the biggest opensource project seen on OS/2. It has a full comercial
OS with similar origin as Windows. Still Odin is far from complete...
Dont missunderstand me, Odin is great, but it shows how long it
would take to do that, a linux layer, supporting drivers from these
OS'es and giving the GUI apps a complete environment to run in.
>What I want to say is very simple: We have to think about a new
>operating system before we start to write it. I respect your effort and
>your fear about running out of time. But we will lose more if we invest
>a lot of time into something that has no future.
>
Since in part I have to agree with you I suggested that we start with
the command line tools. These tools will be required undependant
of what plattform (kernel) they will live upon. They all use the CPI
and (kbd/mou/vio) API's that MUST exist in a near 100% compatible
way if we want to be able to run any OS/2 app untop of anything
else than IBM OS/2.
The kernel is an open question but its not a "just pick a kernel, fix
a few lines, recompile - voila".
>Even if a lot of us don't like IBM anymore it's still the only company
>which can help us. IBM changed a lot the past years (regarding open
>source) and because of this I still think it's not impossible to get at
>last some parts of OS/2 one day (we would need at least PM source for
>example). But if some OS/2 freaks start to release illegal binaries
>based on sourcecode they don't own IBM won't trust the community
>anymore at all in the future.
>
Get real, why did Serenity manage to do what they did ?
Money !
To get IBM to opensource OS/2 there is only one thing that would
have any influence (negative or positive)...
>We have a lot of exiting new developers in east europe, some of you are
>very skilled. Don't stop coding on your ideas but also don't risk legal
>actions against you. The whole OS/2 community needs your programming
>skills in the future and you can lose other people respect very fast if
>you are too much into grayzone stuff. So if some parts of your work are
>done on IBM OS/2 sourcecode keep it for your own. Use it as a case
>study and start to implement something else as open source.
>
What you are saying is as illegal as recompiling and
releasing unmodified IBM sources !
Either we all agree that using IBM sources is OK (its not) or we stop
talking like this !
You people still thinks its OK to have it but not use it !!
>Just some ideas: BSD IP Stack, XFree86 4.x binary driver GRADD
>interface (imagine 3D, 2D and TV support , support Holger Veit in
>his efforts of adding BSD methods to OS/2, support the Everblue team
>(hi Nuke , learn how to debug Win32 applications in Odin and so on.
>
We set out people to do XFree stuff, BSD methods, Everblue, debugging
Odin and such. All this requires IBM OS/2 to run on.
Updates to the closedsource IBM OS/2 is no more !
It may not be as sexy to build a CPI layer but that will give us the chance
to do what you want in the future.
>I hope Achim and some other developers will present their ideas in the
>near future (well at least some of them will, I'm quite sure). Noone
>can be forced to join their ideas but in my opinion it would make more
>sense to wait for them.
>
My recomendation is quite clear:
*** Join a project that have have at least one foot in reality. ***
Btw: I would love to be proven wrong.
I would love to see a opensource mk based OS that runs unmodified
OS/2 and Linux binaries with a mixed X and PM/WPS interface.
So please, prove me wrong.
Sincerely
JMA
Development and Consulting
John Martin , jma@...
==================================
Website: http://www.jma.se/
email: mail@...
Phone: 46-(0)70-6278410
==================================