Editing OS/2 (section)

====Petitions for open source====
Many people hoped that IBM would release OS/2 or a significant part of it as [[open-source software|open source]]. Petitions were held in 2005 and 2007, but IBM refused them, citing legal and technical reasons.<ref>{{cite web| title=Slashdot: IBM Won't Open-Source OS/2| date=22 January 2008 |url=http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/22/0258213 }}</ref> It is unlikely that the entire OS will be open at any point in the future because it contains third-party code to which IBM does not have copyright, and much of this code is from Microsoft. IBM also once engaged in a technology transfer with [[Commodore International|Commodore]], licensing [[Amiga]] technology for OS/2 2.0 and above, in exchange for the [[Rexx|REXX]] scripting language.<ref name=HistoryOS2BBS>{{cite web|title=OS/2 Warp History|url=http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/OS2Warp.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130127122310/http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/OS2Warp.html|archive-date=January 27, 2013|access-date=April 9, 2013}}</ref>{{Unreliable source?|date=October 2021}} This means that OS/2 may have some code that was not written by IBM, which can therefore prevent the OS from being re-announced as open-sourced in the future.<ref>{{cite web|title=IBM OS/2 Warp History|date=2004-06-24|url=http://www.os2world.com/content/view/15847/1/|access-date=2008-09-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080919095144/http://www.os2world.com/content/view/15847/1/|archive-date=2008-09-19|url-status=dead}}</ref>{{Failed verification|date=June 2011}}<ref>The Art of Unix Programming p. 66 {{ISBN|0-13-142901-9}}, {{ISBN|978-0-13-142901-7}}</ref> On the other hand, [[IBM]] donated [[Object REXX]] for Windows and OS/2 to the ''Open Object REXX'' project maintained by the ''REXX Language Association'' on [[SourceForge]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.oorexx.org/faq/ |title=Open Object REXX FAQ |access-date=2011-07-05}}</ref>

There was a petition, arranged by OS2World, to open parts of the OS. Open source operating systems such as [[Linux]] have already profited from OS/2 indirectly through IBM's release of the improved [[JFS (file system)|JFS]] [[file system]], which was ported from the OS/2 code base. As IBM didn't release the source of the OS/2 JFS driver, developers ported the Linux driver back to eComStation and added the functionality to boot from a JFS partition. This new JFS driver has been integrated into eComStation v2.0, and later into ArcaOS 5.0.