Details
Category: Software

Dear OS/2/eComStation/ArcaOS user,

The OS/2 VOICE foundation is sending this email to the OS/2 community because we need your assistance to collect funding for a new web browser on OS/2/eComStation/ArcaOS.

The company Bitwise Works from Austria has been doing a lot of work to maintain Firefox for OS/2 over the last couple of years. As Herwig Bauernfeind from Bitwise Works made clear in his presentation he gave at Warpstock 2018 Toronto, Firefox for OS/2 is on its way out for OS/2 after version 52 ESR. The primary reason is because Firefox is switching to RUST. Rust is a general purpose programming language sponsored by Mozilla Research. It is unlikely that RUST will ever be ported to OS/2.

But there is another reason why Firefox needs to be replaced, its getting bigger and more complex with each release, to big to maintain basically. Developers that use Firefox on other operating systems have also been complaining about the fact that Mozilla applications have turned into a merry go round with libraries (DLL's). One library gets used in version X and a few versions later another is added or removed.

As it now stands Firefox 52 will be the last browser that is known that we can port to OS/2. Do not worry however Firefox 45 is being finished and 52 when released will give us browser support for 1 1/2 to 2 years to come. But we need to work on a strategy now.

While a Firefox browser based on RUST is no longer an option, what options have we got ?

We currently have 2 options:

1) A browser based on Qt 5.5/5.9, one *possible* candidate is the Otter browser.
https://otter-browser.org/
But having Q.T. will also make it easier to port the Chromium web browser to OS/2.

2) The second option is to port the Pale Moon browser to OS/2. Pale Moon is a browser based on an older version of
Firefox. https://www.palemoon.org/

When it comes to the previously mentioned Q.T.this is a cross-platform application framework that is used for developing application software that can be run on various software and hardware platforms with little or no change in the underlying codebase, while still being a native application with native capabilities and speed.
https://www.qt.io/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28software%29

Currently OS/2 has support for QT version 4.78, but we need Q.T. version 5.5/5.9 to be current enough to port a browser to our OS/2. http://trac.netlabs.org/qt4

Our goal is to provide 10,000 USD (about 8.500 Euro) to Bitwise to update Qt to version 5.5/5.9. If its decided Bitwise Works choices to port Pale Moon your donations will be used for this project. We feel confident that Bitwise Works has outstanding know how to decide which route will provide the OS/2 users a new web browser for the coming years. 

VOICE has supported many open-source projects in the past, and any funds in excess of that needed to port Qt or Palemoon, will be donated to other open-source projects to benefit OS/2 users.

You can donate at the following link.

100% of your donation will go to Bitwise Works.
If you have any questions about this sponsorship, please send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

On this page you can follow how much money has donated:

As of the 11th of October we have 0 US Dollar.

Details
Category: VOICE

Dear OS/2 community members and VOICE supporters,

On the 6th of August 2014 me (Roderick Klein) and Gerrit Schoenmaker went to a Dutch public notary to start the OS/2 VOICE International foundation, after the VOICE members approved this transition.  Since then, VOICE has been active but we have not had much time to communicate to our donators what has been done with the money!

But first, as to why. There were two reasons to convert VOICE from a Canadian organization to a Dutch foundation.

  1. There was one was potential fiscal issue. To the best of our understanding the treasurer of OS/2 VOICE in Canada could be viewed by the Canadian IRS as a person with a private bank account. VOICE had never been officially reported to the Canadian IRS as non profit organization. We also could not find somebody to replace Gordon Snider as a treasurer in Canada.
  2. Another reaseon we wanted to convert the organization was to speed up the decisions process. Often it wold take weeks to get from an idea to a board and member vote. This issue was also described in the document sent to all VOICE members so they could read why we (the board) wanted to convert OS/2 VOICE into a Dutch foundation.

In my opinion a lot of OS/2 users just want to see stuff get done. Having said that, VOICE also wants to be transparent on how it spends your donations.

VOICE is now an official Dutch foundation registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and its bylaws are registered with a public notary.  You can find a best-effort translation of the bylaws from Dutch to English here.

All projects supported have to be in line with these bylaws. This for example means if we sponsor software development the binaries will have to be available for everybody free of charge and the source code has to be covered by some sort of "open source" license. Another example are organising or supporting  events like Warpstock Europe to promote OS/2.

In short the  OS/2 community must benefit of actions taken by OS/2 VOICE. The OS/2 VOICE board has 7 members who have to approve all proposals, as an extra safe guard to make certain your money is spent as wisely as possible. You can find the financial report for 2015 here.

Note: The reason OS/2 VOICE has about 19.000 US Dollars on its bank is mostly due to the of the PMMAIL product over the last 10 years.

What has OS/2 VOICE been spending your donations on ?

  • The new os2.org forum is sponsored by VOICE at a cost of €120 a year. This mainly covers the cost for webhosting. In return the OS/2 VOICE logo is  shown on their front page.
  • Netlabs.org, also a non-profit orginations, hosts a wide variety of projects that are being updated by OS/2 community members. Netlabs needed a new backup server and VOICE donated €1000 to Netlabs to make this possible. To get an impression how many projects are hosted by Netlabs read their Netlabs newsletter. Netlabs also hosts the core RPM repository with a lot of software ported by Bitwise Works and other people: see http://rpm.netlabs.org/.
  • BitWise Works works on porting / developing Qt 5.5 for OS/2; this libary is used to port many applications to OS/2. Voice has contributed €1800 to support this effort and will donate another €1800 once the project is finished. For more information on Qt, see http://trac.netlabs.org/qt4. By the way, you can purchase sponsor units for BitWise Works and other people who port software to OS/2 here.
  • A laptop for Wim Brul has been sponsored for 250 Euro so he can develop his software in an SMP environment for his webcam/touch screen drivers.
  • Development of the so called Split Window view in Xworkplace has been finished; this was been by Rich Walsh at a cost of $900. While the binaries and source code are currently not publicly available yet, sources will be committed to http://trac.netlabs.org/xworkplace and binaries will be uploaded to hobbes.nmsu.edu. The changes are currently receiving final testing before being submitted into SVN.
  • Warpstock Europe 2015, 2016 and 2017.

You might wonder why VOICE supports Warpstock Europe, while a lot of donators never visit the event. The core reason for doing so is that it brings together paid and unpaid people who develop software for OS/2. For example, in May 2016 people from Arca Noae and Bitwise Works at Warpstock 2016 in Cologne, Germany. But also other volunteers and end-users meet at the conference and talk with each other. And for those who could not make it to Warpstock Europe we provided a video and audio stream.

We believe it is this interaction between developers and end users that provides a basis for new projects and ideas. It also puts OS/2 in the spotlight outside of its small community, with articles on heise.de and TechRepublic. While the heise.de article does not have such a positive "tone" it was still placed on the website of Heise, thanks to a a press release release by OS/2 VOICE.

In 2015 Warpstock Europe operated at a loss (see the financial report). This was mainly due to time constraints on behalf of the chairman. While we still need to do the accounting for this year's Warpstock, it likely operated at a loss also. But we intend to break even or even make a small "profit" on the next event. Nevertheless, Warpstock Europe was a success in the sense that we had 40 visitors in Cologne this year, a significant rise compared to previous years. We think this has also to do with all the news surrounding ArcaOS (also known as Blue Lion), which encourages more people to visit Warpstock Europe/US.

Warpstock Europe 2017 will be held in Rotterdam and the website www.warpstock.eu already reflects this. By announcing Warpstock Europe 2017 earlier than the previous two Warpstocks Europe we hope to attract more people and break even or even make a small profit. We already secured sponsoring from Daniel Caroll from the US for the social event, which does not haveto be paid for by VOICE.


Future projects we are working on:

  • rpm.os2voice.org (the project just got started, the URL is not functioning yet!). This project is to provide the OS/2 community with more RPM packages that can be installed on OS/2 with the free ANPM package manager. We are working to get a team of volunteers together.
  • This article and the site articles.os2voice.org is a new starting point to get more and new articles published about  OS/2 and getting the OS/2 VOICE newsletter back on track.
  • Other projects under consideration are a Youtube channel with videos about OS/2 and to start again with speakups. With speakups OS/2 users can ask questions to a developer.


On behalf of the OS/2 VOICE board I would to thank all members for your donation and I hope you feel the money you donated has contributed to keeping our favorite operating system moving forward.

Best regards,

Roderick Klein

President OS/2 VOICE