OS2 World.Com Forum

Subject  :  Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  Martin
Date  :  22 Mar, 2004 on 03:49
Hi

Is there any abandonware OS/2 Programs that will be great to open source ? Any suggestions on which will be a good program to be turned open souce ?

Martin


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  arr
Date  :  22 Mar, 2004 on 13:41
I don't know if it is possible to get in touch with the authors, but I wouldn't mind seeing Embellish open sourced and develoopment continuing with that. It's great software and
I always thought it was a shame it was abandoned. If I come acroos others I will post them.

kind regards,
arr


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  BigWarpGuy
Date  :  22 Mar, 2004 on 14:21
IIRC - the author of Embellish was not interested in open sourceing it even though he did allow anyone to download it from his site for free but I doubt it would hurt to ask.

I did with the webcam software at http://hobbes.nmsu.edu and was surprised that the author released the source code. I think I will do more requesting of authors of other programs of programs at Hobbes.


BigWarpGuy
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
OS/2 Warp-ed to the very end.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  oli
Date  :  22 Mar, 2004 on 22:39
1) IBM's 32bit Oberon-2 development enviroment (even if 12 years old, still cool)

2) Photo Graphics Pro (Unique, even the current products from the company lack some if it's ideas, could do with an update and bugfixes to the rendering engine)

3) Jurgens Modula-2 compiler (AKA MillHill, Interesting idea that was never fully developed)

4) Future Wave Editor (Great proggy that does not work well with gradd and a few other drivers but is otherwise fine)

5) IBM Works (Has someone found the author ? I still like this although it's getting hopelessly outdated, sometimes a basic program is a better choise than a full one and with just a tiny bit of updates this would be great)

6) Ceres Sound Studio (Another good idea that only needed a bit of development)

7) RTMIDI (Despite much hype by the author this is an odd blend of trash and some sound programming but since it's only a MIDI subset asis, very frustrating to use, author threatened to put the sources to this on Hobbes in 2000 to allow yours truly and others interested in finishing the sysex implementation but that never materialised)

MidiStation (Mr. Hodges has stopped updating this probably due to problems with RTMidi, otherwise quite a neat basic sequencer that could do well with minor updates)

9) GPF Rexx (Another hoplessly outdated program but since Vispro and Watcom Rexxes will never be released as open source this is the only alterative for a visual Rexx enviroment except tor starting from scratch)

10) MMOS2 Subsystem (IBM offered the sources in 2001 but noone was interested)

11) The microkernel from PPC OS/2 ? (OK due to switching limitations with x86 processors this will never get ported but I would still like to get a peek, and no Microsoft involvement in this so they cannot use that excuse)

12) All the Taligent stuff that IBM showed for OS/2 and never shipped, bound to me something interesting in there.


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  oli
Date  :  22 Mar, 2004 on 22:45
Forgot :
1) This is more possible than it seems since this was an internal research tool and there was even talk about releasing it as EWS at the time

Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  ecsguy
Date  :  24 Mar, 2004 on 09:37
Dr.Dialog, GUI program tool, is an IBM EWS avaiable at Hobbes.

The program's author, David C. Morril, is no longer at IBM but maybe he can help you to get IBM to release the source

http://www.themorrillfamily.com/david/projects/drdialog/
mailto:dmorrill@austin.rr.com

A write up on using Dr. Dialog was in Voice (Sept 2002)
http://www.os2voice.org/VNL/past_issues/VNL0902H/vnewsf6.htm


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  arr
Date  :  24 Mar, 2004 on 13:06
You can put a checkmark next to IBMWorks for me also. I think it is also a nice package and would be nice to open soure it and development continue on it, especially new filters.

kind regards,
arr


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  QHand
Date  :  24 Mar, 2004 on 14:47
Could we change the PM GUI outlook? Like the Mac OSX! That is the beautiful GUI that OS/2 must have.

Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  oli
Date  :  24 Mar, 2004 on 22:33

ecsguy (24 Mar, 2004 09:37):
Dr.Dialog, GUI program tool, is an IBM EWS avaiable at Hobbes.

The program's author, David C. Morril, is no longer at IBM but maybe he can help you to get IBM to release the source


Yes but the problem is that it was written in the Oberon-2 development system that I listed as 1), this has never been released outside of IBM and since there is currently no O2 system available for OS/2-ecs except a hopeless EMX based compiler, the sources would probably not be very useful, hence my wish for GPF, that program has not been updated since 2.1 was hot but it would still be a useful base.


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  BigWarpGuy
Date  :  25 Mar, 2004 on 17:02
Could we change the PM GUI outlook? Like the Mac OSX! That is the beautiful GUI that OS/2 must have.

You could check out http://frepm.sourceforge.net to see if it is possible (IIRC - it is still being worked on).


BigWarpGuy
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
OS/2 Warp-ed to the very end.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  ChrisR roossien@gmail.com
Date  :  26 Mar, 2004 on 10:03
Well.. changing the looks of the GUI is all a matter of taste..
I don’t like it, I don’t want my eCS/OS2 to look like an other GUI no matter how beautiful it looks.. Is has to be functional in the first place..
I would never want to change my looks because its the OS2/eCS looks, its fits its functionality and we can do things with our GUI no any other system can do.. I don’t want to lose that..
Well OK.. I have eLite and Xworkplace, candy-bar with transparent folders, WPS wizard to run transparent programs on the desktop.. this desktop from stardock thing..
The only problem is that those programs overlap each other, the same functionality sits in more programs so you have to configure and tune all well...
The grass is always greener at the neighbours.. users of other systems are jealous at my desktop:-))
Oh yeah, I did read something about none square windows.. well look at chiary programs at hobbes for an example.. I think none square windows is a matter of how individual programs are made, as far as I know there is not a system in were the users can draw their own windows.... at the most they have some predefined models what won’t even work with every program.. but I can be wrong.. I’m not an expert on alien operating systems..
I don’t like beautiful airplanes with golden wings that crash halfway the flight because gold is too soft to keep a plane in the air..
I prefer an old stable plane with flight experiences that will arrive.. and even within the time..
But if someone wants to have its eCS look exactly like Win XP or an apple vacuum cleaner that’s all a matter of taste.. .. ..
And with the current programs and utilities it should be very easy.. there are Win XP themes on hobbes..

Yeah OK.. I know this subject is about open sourcing existing programs.. and that’s something I really like..
Specially if there are people who want to work on it and have the time for it..
There are so many programs .. many are from stardock.. Watcom FBI.. (where to get a OS2 version???) Describe.. and the whole list from above.. ..
Another solution is to make eCS more popular.. and then stardock and others suddenly come with support again..
And eCS is becoming really popular lately.. much more as we realize..
So who knows what will happen eventually.. when all the golden planes are crashed.. then people have no choice:-))

Chris


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  arr
Date  :  26 Mar, 2004 on 14:11
...and now back to the real topic of this thread. I wonder about looking into open-sourcing photo graphics pro. It's a nice package sure but like any other piece of software - it could be improved as well.

kind regards,
arr


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  ChrisR roossien@gmail.com
Date  :  26 Mar, 2004 on 16:25
I think IBM has a lot of OS2 programs we (almost) know nothing about.
Maybe many is based on rumours only..
But searching for something completely different I found a very good programmers editor from IBM..
Alpha they call it..

http://macarlo.com/downloade.htm

IBM must have many interesting sources.


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  rbri rbri@compuserve.com
Date  :  26 Mar, 2004 on 19:58
What about ZipStream/CryptStream. The WebSite seems to be dead

Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  oli
Date  :  27 Mar, 2004 on 01:29

ChrisR (26 Mar, 2004 16:25):
I think IBM has a lot of OS2 programs we (almost) know nothing about.
Maybe many is based on rumours only..
But searching for something completely different I found a very good programmers editor from IBM..
Alpha they call it..

http://macarlo.com/downloade.htm

IBM must have many interesting sources.


I think that sources for that editor whare available in some form at some time, anyway, Alpha was on every tech connection/dev CD etc that IBM sent out and is on hobbes etc, surpriced that you have not come across it earlier, IBM have relesed some sources that people have simply ignored for instancce their souce code level debugger, you often get this with compilers etc. at v3.5 even today, but IBM actually released v5 with sources in 95 or so but no one has been interested in doing any work on it


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  ChrisR roossien@gmail.com
Date  :  28 Mar, 2004 on 15:25


Alpha was on every tech connection/dev CD etc that IBM sent out and is on hobbes etc, surpriced that you have not come across it earlier,

Yeah, thats realy strange.. maybe I should have a closer look on visualage c++ cd?

Well as I mentioned earlier, before collecting sources there should be eneugh peoplo with eneugh time and knowlede to work on it..
OS2 realy was dying some years ago.. thanks to eCS (and Win XP? ) its becoming populair again..

What about Audio station (MIDI Station) it seems to have stopped. ?

And ChrisW stopped with the MMclasses.. (its a pity) maybe he could open the sources??


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  Martin
Date  :  06 Apr, 2004 on 00:52
Today some OS/2 tools get open sourced:

PGPKeys: A shell for PGP 5.0 key management
SysEDOS2: Editordesktop for configuration files
ISORen: Rename files and directories ISO conform
NetUse:Graphical Frontend for NET-Commands

Visit: http://bohn-stralsund.de/t_frame.htm


Subject  :  Stephen Loomis Opensouced his software
Author  :  Martin
Date  :  12 Apr, 2004 on 06:04
Stephen Loomis has also opensourced his software.

For the moment Im uploading Indentd and PMRadio to hobbes.

Martin


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  Kim
Date  :  14 Apr, 2004 on 14:49
Martin, a tool that I would like to see open sourced, if possible, is WatchCat:

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/system/wcat21.zip


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  phaelonimaire
Date  :  14 Apr, 2004 on 19:18
It has always been my opinion that the biggest missing component was a good (embedded?) process manager. I would love to see development begin again on WatchCat. Out of all of the various programs designed to do the same job, I keep moving back to it.

..I would love to see new revisions of the programs listed here. I like IBM Works much better than Lotus. ..But I wonder if perhaps it is best to focus on the future more than embellishing the past. (too much, anyway. )


Subject  :  Key to/for Open Sourcing OS/2 Software?
Author  :  BigWarpGuy
Date  :  14 Apr, 2004 on 21:23
I guess the key to getting programs/software for OS/2-eCS to be open sourced is to find the original author and hope he/she agrees to release the source code. Looks like there might be a trend for it.
BigWarpGuy
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
OS/2 Warp-ed/eComStation-ed to the very end.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  Kim
Date  :  15 Apr, 2004 on 12:12

phaelonimaire (14 Apr, 2004 19:1:
It has always been my opinion that the biggest missing component was a good (embedded?) process manager. I would love to see development begin again on WatchCat. Out of all of the various programs designed to do the same job, I keep moving back to it.

Agree, I started of using WatchCat, then we got Process Commander... but since of problem with PC together with OS2 v4.52 I had to try out some other tools and I ended up usign WatchCat once again. It's one of the first tools that I install on my system, always!

So if this could be opensourced it would be great andif it could be part of eCS for example, even better.

/Kim


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  Ben Dragon
Date  :  15 Apr, 2004 on 18:42

Agree, I started of using WatchCat, then we got Process Commander... but since of problem with PC together with OS2 v4.52 I had to try out some other tools and I ended up usign WatchCat once again. It's one of the first tools that I install on my system, always!

eCS 1.1 and Process Commander working fine here though with the loss of a few functions.

Though I'd like to see the last version of PC source code released and updated.


--
Ben Dragon

Subject  :  Re: Process Commander
Author  :  Kim
Date  :  20 Apr, 2004 on 16:31

Ben Dragon (15 Apr, 2004 18:42):

Agree, I started of using WatchCat, then we got Process Commander... but since of problem with PC together with OS2 v4.52 I had to try out some other tools and I ended up usign WatchCat once again. It's one of the first tools that I install on my system, always!

eCS 1.1 and Process Commander working fine here though with the loss of a few functions.

Though I'd like to see the last version of PC source code released and updated.


Ok, I haven't tried it out for a while, but I recall that it wouldn't work at all for me under WSFeB. You mentioned that it works without any problem except for some minor features; such as?

Well, I've moved this reply to other board as well to keep the thread on topic.. Please follow this for Process Commander thread


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  Kim
Date  :  20 Apr, 2004 on 21:04

Ben Dragon (15 Apr, 2004 18:42):

Agree, I started of using WatchCat, then we got Process Commander... but since of problem with PC together with OS2 v4.52 I had to try out some other tools and I ended up usign WatchCat once again. It's one of the first tools that I install on my system, always!

eCS 1.1 and Process Commander working fine here though with the loss of a few functions.

Though I'd like to see the last version of PC source code released and updated.


StarDock has a bunch of applications where Process Commander is one. Ben's suggestion about seing this products as open source is a great idea.

So question to Martin, has there been any kind of contact with StarDock about releasing code?


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  Martin
Date  :  25 Apr, 2004 on 00:38
Not yet Kim. But I will go to them later.

Im pretty sure that Stardock software is on everyones wish list.

Martin


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  Christian Hennecke
Date  :  25 Apr, 2004 on 13:38
I've tried to convince Brad Wardell shortly after they withdrew from the OS/2 market. No reply. Given Brad Wardell's opinion about OS/2 users, I sincerely doubt that he would open one line of code.

On the other hand, a pal of mine once tried to get WatchCat or Process Commander open-sourced. IIRC Brad wasn't against it, but had lost contact to the developers. My pal finally managed to track them, but one of them didn't want to release the code. Well, that was a few years ago, maybe he wouldn't mind now.


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  Christian Hennecke
Date  :  27 Apr, 2004 on 15:00
I just read that PhotoTiger, a nice small graphics app that was available in both English and German, is not sold anymore. See www.phototiger.com.

Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  Ben Dragon
Date  :  27 Apr, 2004 on 18:27
I like that one.

Here's another, what about the Modular Dreams Plugins for Colorworks V2?

Colorworks is becoming less useful all the time but having those plugin modules would certainly breathe some life into it.



Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  adam
Date  :  01 May, 2004 on 12:55
Ok, this one is probably way too much of a stretch - but what about Describe? Does anyone know where to get in touch with the people who did Describe or has that already been attempted and it flopped?

regards,
adam


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  adam
Date  :  02 May, 2004 on 19:54
Actually, I guess it wouldn't hurt to try it. Does anyone know how I could get in touch with any of the people that were behind Describe. Even after 8 years it's still a great word processor - it's a shame to let something like that go to waste. Couldn't hurt to at least try. The worst any of them could say is no.

regards,
adam


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  adam
Date  :  05 May, 2004 on 19:29
Oh and how about wipeout screensaver. I saw a reference on another os/2 website that the Bocasoft team were going to release the source shortly after they made thr program free back in 1998 but haven't found it yet. Does anyone know what the 411 is on this?

regards,
adam


Subject  :  Re:Suggestions for the Open Sourcing OS/2 Software Campaign
Author  :  Fahrvenugen
Date  :  10 Aug, 2004 on 06:56
I havn't seen it listed yet, but how about Innoval's Post Road Mailer? I still continue to use Version 3.0, but there are a few bugs (and improvements - like SMTP with Authentication, and IMAP) I'd love to see.

Powered by UltraBoard 2000 <www.ub2k.com>