It's good to see that FOSS is helping keep OS/2 alive. I was pretty pleased with it way back when, so I can see how others might have applications they feel are well suited to it that would make them want to keep it around.
REXX is extraordinarily cool. I really liked the graphical version of it. I used it to make graphical utility programs for my users. The author is apparently unaware though that there is a version of REXX available for just about every OS in existance. I remember when IBM-DOS 7.0 came out, and it had REXX support. REXX + DOS rocked, as other versions of DOS (i.e., Microsoft's versions still don't have a decent shell script language.) One of the things I thought was cool, was that I could write a REXX script, and have it run unchanged on DOS, OS/2, and our IBM mainframe (IBM 3090) if I was careful with how it was written.
I'm a UNIX guy these days, but applaud those who are doing what they can to keep OS/2 alive.
OSS Ping please?
REXX was by far the best thing about OS/2, which due to its single message queue seemed almost as prone to being locked up by errant native applications (of which there were many) as Windows 3.1 was. Windows NT 3.51 was superior in stability, but OS/2 really got crushed by the mass adoption of Windows 95. Given a few more years, IBM could have made OS/2 a viable competitor.
How is this open source? From the article...
Faced with IBM's withdrawal from marketing OS/2, OS/2 World sent a petition to IBM executives last November that was signed by more than 11,000 people, asking that the OS/2 source code be open sourced. Martin Iturbide of OS/2 World says they have received no reply -- nor did the recipients reply to my request to discuss the petition.