As of today, IBM is officially withdrawing OS/2 from the market, and
product CDs are no longer available.
The move had originally been announced in July and affects
the final two versions of IBM's OS/2 effort, OS/2 Warp V4 and OS/2 Warp
Server for e-business.
IBM's OS/2 effort originally began as a joint effort with Microsoft in
1985, a deal which ended in 1990 when the development partnership faltered.
OS/2 version three, released in 1992, was the first to have the "Warp"
moniker attached to it. Version four was released in 1996.
The Handbook of Software for Engineers and Scientists - Google Books Result::
href=http://books.google.com/books?id=LTi_DN_LCSIC&pg=PA189&lpg=PA189&dq=IBM+Withdraws+OS/2&source=web&ots=2o_EJ7OOuo&sig=WrPpvNUyi4u0PtjesFWjwbIk_VM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=80&ct=result class=l onmousedown=return clk(this.href,,,res,85,)>The Handbook of Software for Engineers and Scientists - Google Books Resultby Paul W. Ross - 1996 - Computers - 1557 pagesIn late 1990, Microsoft withdrew from OS/2 development to focus on Windows and Windows NT. However, IBM has continued to support OS/2.
http://books.google.com/books?id=LTi_DN_LCSIC&pg=PA189&lpg=PA189&dq=IBM+Withdraws+OS/2&source=web&ots=2o_EJ7OOuo&sig=WrPpvNUyi4u0PtjesFWjwbIk_VM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=80&ct=resultHOME |
Throughout its life, OS/2 faced competition from Microsoft Windows and
never overcame it. The true death knell for OS/2 likely came, though,
once IBM began its full embrace of Linux in 1999. In fact, IBM is
explicitly recommending to OS/2 users that they switch to Linux.
"There are no replacement products from IBM," IBM's OS/2 migration page
states. "IBM suggests that OS/2 customers consider Linux as an alternative
operating system for OS/2 client and server environments."
Though IBM is giving up on OS/2, OS/2 users aren't quite done with it
yet.
Over 13,000 of them have signed a petition asking IBM to open source some, if not all, of OS/2 and its components.
"For customers that want to keep OS/2, or for those long-time users who
are considering migrating to another OS, the open sourcing of OS/2 makes
perfect sense," the os2world.com petition states. "We also have an OS/2
community of developers that has produced several open source software (sic) for
OS/2 and many are willing to continue doing so."
To date, though, IBM has not responded to community request to open source
OS/2.
Though OS/2 is being officially withdrawn from the market today, IBM
standard support will continue until December 31 2006 and, beyond
that, will be available as a separate Service Extension fee-based offering.
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