The Parallel Evolution of OS/2 and Free Software

Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog

Earlier this week, you might have noticed Esther Schindler and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writing about the twenty-fifth anniversary of OS/2, IBM's operating system of the 1990s. So did at least half a dozen others.

Why bother, you might ask? OS/2 still exists today as a hobbyist operating system under the name of eComStation, but it's been a long time since it had any influence on the direction of mainstream computing. Nor is eComStation free software, although many of the applications it runs are.

You might be tempted to attribute the interest entirely to the nostalgia of the middle-aged. In my case, that would definitely be a factor; I not only ran OS/2 for six years, but the first articles that I sold were about OS/2 applications.
 
However, nostalgia alone would hardly justify dredging up memories of OS/2. If that were all, then the memories would amount to nothing more than a minor footnote in the history of computing.

Rather, for those of us who used computers in the 1990s, OS/2 was an evolutionary parallel to free software. It was a hopeful monster, produced in response to the same pressures that resulted in free software, but leading to different results. Moreover, its failure was both an object lesson and an event that left free software without competitors in its niche. More than anything else, this parallel evolution is why the history of OS/2 is worth revisiting.

Community and Thoroughness

Like free software, OS/2 began as a reaction to the early days of the computer market. On the corporate level, it began as an effort to create the next generation of interfaces after Windows and the Mac OS. For users, it was an alternative that showed you cared about performance and wouldn't just settle for a pretty interface. Sound familiar?

Later, when Microsoft stopped helping to develop OS/2 and rumors about its covert operations against this potential rival began to leak out, anti-Microsoft sentiment became even stronger in the OS/2 community. But the feeling was strong in the community right from the start. The scorn for Microsoft and Apple, the sense that OS/2 users were an elite who knew what matter and had chosen the superior alternative was never very far away.

Such feelings had much the same result as they did in free software: They created a sense of community. Born partly of pride, partly out of a growing sense of persecution, the OS/2 community was something that hadn't been seen in computing before. 

Unlike the cults of Microsoft and Apple, it was tied to a corporation by only the loosest of ties and such loyalty as the community gave to IBM was strictly conditional. Edwin Black's OS/2 Professional magazine, for example, took an openly critical stance on IBM's handling of OS/2 that was applauded even more heavily than it was criticized. Increasingly, the community began to place its faith in its members rather than in corporations, just as the free software was doing more or less independently at the same time.
 
Another trait that the OS/2 and early free software communities had in common was a commitment to excellence in programming. The number of OS/2 applications were never large, but for their time many were miles ahead of anything available for other operating systems.

On the desktop, I particularly remember Filestar/2. Although today I would probably think it crude, at the time I was amazed by its thoroughness. The same window incorporated both basic file management and compression, and a wealth of configuration options and multiple panes. It was obviously the product of developers who were determined to put every tool you could possibly need into one application. Looking back, I am reminded of apps like Amarok, K3B, and digiKam, all of which try to be just as thorough in what they do.

The same was true of many OS/2 applications. The first graphical editor for markup languages I ever saw was an application from IBM, which -- all too typically -- never got the promotion it deserved. And while the fact is sometimes forgotten today, the first version of Partition Magic was available only for OS/2 (and rightly regarded as a marvel of the times). 

Or consider Galactic Civilizations, which, because of OS/2's superior multi-tasking, was a game whose scope and complexity, especially in its AIs, couldn't be matched on Windows for a couple of years. Interestingly enough, as one reader pointed out, it was promoted heavily in the forums by its lead developer, a move that was almost unheard of back then.

Such innovations seemed the norm in the mid-1990s. It was as if, having questioned the limits and standards of Microsoft and Apple, the OS/2 community freed itself to rethink and re-imagine what were then the norms of computing. Despite neglect, sabotage, and a small market (or maybe because of them), the OS/2 community managed to do what even the free software community wouldn't equal and surpass until several years later.

The Free Software Refuge

In fact, OS/2's failure may very well have been free software's opportunity. As IBM's abandonment of the platform became increasingly obvious, the community's bulletin boards and mailing lists began to include references to something called Linux. I remember more than one person well-known in the community for freeware and scripts announcing that they were stopping work on OS/2 and intending to concentrate on Linux instead. 

For a while, the die-hards talked about using free software to replace IBM. In particular, there was talk of using WINE for running windows applications. But in ones and twos, ordinary users like me dropped out of the dying community, and many of us followed the developers into software.

As a refuge, free software felt remarkably like home. The anti-Microsoft sentiment, the distrust of all large corporations, the commitment to quality and innovation, the belief in community -- to OS/2 refugees, the atmosphere was instantly familiar. If the anti-corporate sentiment was even stronger than it had been in the OS/2 community, our recent experiences had strengthened those sentiments in us, too.

In this way, the failure of OS/2 helped to strengthen the free software community. In 2002, the release of Lou Gerstner's autobiography, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? would reveal just how badly IBM had let down the OS/2 community and help to reinforce the attitudes of the free software community. But even before then, the failure of OS/2 had reinforced the ranks of free software supporters and removed a potential competitor. 

OS/2 proved an evolutionary dead-end. Its community never did manage the final step of breaking all corporate ties. Instead, the operating system became a transitional form, part corporate and part community, and the contradiction resulted in its collapse into the bare remnants that remain today. 

Still, for a while OS/2 came close to an independent invention of free software. And, while we may never know for sure, its collapse probably gave free software a boost just in time for the dot-com era. Without OS/2, free software would not have developed the way it did, and that is why its history is worth remembering occasionally.
 

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