Hello
First of all, thanks for the feedback, and sorry I don't reply that fast, since I had been busy with the server DDoS attacks and it slows me down on forum replies (like I guess is happening to all of us interacting with OS2World)
My idea is for "replacing (when possible) IBM OS/2 close source components (binaries, .exe) with open-source alternatives" is to be added to the strategy when possible and not becoming their main strategy.
I want to put a little example.
- Let's replace bldlevel.exe with the OSFree bldlevel.
--
https://github.com/osfree-project/osfree/tree/master/OS2/CMD/bldlevel- It uses the The 3-Clause BSD License
ArcaOS could embrace the apple strategy when they created OS/X of using an open source base system (in their case Darwin) with thier own commercial propriety system on top of it (keeping the OS/2 UI for example like the workplace shell/WPS). And, they had created the "classic" mode to allow old os 9 apps to still work. Would require them embracing a totally new direction though.
Even that I may like that strategy, It is basically grabbing a new operating system (maybe Linux) and create a VM that runs OS/2 on it, and move forward to migrate to Linux. I personally don't like that.
Or creating a 64bit based OS/2 OS from scratch, but we don't have the resources to do that.
I like a lot the idea of grabbing a different kernel (Zircon, ReactOS kernel or Linux Kernel) and create an interpreter for OS/2 over it, but I guess this is a different subject of what I try to discuss here.
I think it's time to relegate the old IBM license to a virtualized session inside a totally new OS, while keeping WPS on top of it, which is where the user has always spent 99% of their time anyways.
I will prefer to construct a "OS/2 like WINE" interpreter under a new kernel to keep running the OS/2 experience on real hardware, like it was discuss on this
forum thread, but again it is not the subject I want to discuss here and we don't have the resource to move on that way.
...BUT.. besides all the porting work, this will kill the OS one day.
Reason why? - Imagine you have replaced a good chunk of tools and maybe even main components. Next day the open source community decides ProjectX (or some dependencies) move on to Rust or some other compiler, that we are not able to compile for OS/2 with. Now you're operating system is busted, if you can't move back to the old closed source components. (maybe due to dependencies)
Here I think we have different perception of open source. Open source does not mean using an specific dependencies libraries, some open source software evolved on that way, yes. But the idea is to ask Arca Noae and to the community to re-use open source
and also to create little replacements for IBM OS/2 close source binaries, not necessary using a Linux project to get ported.
I think the warning you post is good. "Killing" the software by using a library that eventually evolves to Rust, I feel it is the better than using a close source software that can not evolve anymore (like all IBM OS/2 binaries). In the case of IBM's close source we don't have a way to continue it, in the case of open source software we can fork it.
Regards