Here is update number 3 for the OS/2 VOICE browser funding campaign. To be clear the development work will not be performed by OS/2 VOICE. OS/2 VOICE just collects the funding and sends 100% of your donation to bww bitwise works GmbH (hereinafter called BWW). Sorry for the delay in giving no updates for such a long time. I have moved to a new apartment in the last couple of months and have a new job. Also a close family member has been having serious health issue's. Taking away time from this volunteer work.
As of this writing we collected $12,650.00 (this excludes the funding being raised on os2.org).
There have been some misunderstandings in the OS/2 community about this funding campaign that I would like to clear up.
* While the sponsor money is collected by OS/2 VOICE and its called the VOICE browser funding campaign. I have tried to be clear that all the development work is done by BWW. All technical information came from BWW and was discussed with Dmitriy, who is responsible for the Qt 4 port and the current Firefox for OS/2 port among others. Also all funding will be transferred to BWW.
* There is nothing secret or weird happening on this funding campaign. Before the funding campaign was started October 2017, it was discussed with Herwig Bauernfeind from BWW. The whole idea of this funding campaign was for a change to start collecting money early and not to late when Firefox begins to run out of track. Its extremely time consuming to keep Firefox running on OS/2. Everybody at BWW was extremely busy and Herwig appreciated the help from VOICE to perform a funding campaign.
* Another point that was made is, that its unclear in which direction this funding campaign will move. Ongoing research has been done by Dmitry from BWW. When the funding campaign was started it was clear, that Firefox will need the RUST compiler after Firefox 54. To port this compiler is possible but it will need a lot time. We also looked at Pale Moon, which could have been a valid path. But even there it's uncertain, that RUST will not be needed at one point.. It ended up that a Qt based browser made the most sense. But this conclusion was reached *after* the funding campaign was started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9C6Hs-_Ung at 19:28.
The whole point is that this funding campaign was started as early as possible to collect money. People which have doubts about the funding campaign could have asked me privately, but I never received any emails from *anybody* asking me for more information about the funding campaign. Some of the concerns that have been expressed is, if BWW is capable of porting Qt 5.9? The truth is, that the current situation with OS/2 is nothing new compared to lets say 10 years ago. IBM stopped funding OS/2 and organizations like as Mensys and Netlabs stepped into that part. Mensys used to sell sponsor units for Netlabs and BWW. I did manage most of these funding campaigns.
Also BWW has been porting software to OS/2 since 2012! Herwig and Silvan have *always* asked for more funding.
The main reason Java and Qt are running behind is because most of the development time is used for the Firefox port.
The estimated time to port Qt 5 varies from 9 to 12 months. So the question that comes up is: can it be more accurately estimated? The answer is no. We are currently at Qt version 4.78 for OS/2 and the unknown factors will show up as development moves on.
* One other question, that was also asked is what browser version would be selected when a Qt browser is ported.
Chromium seems possible, but we also have other Qt browser. The choice of the browser was and is not that important and can't be done until Qt 5 is ported. As we want to port the best browser by then. And in the end it's the engine (backend) which counts and not the GUI (frontend). And 85% to 90% of source code is Qt based code anyway.
The developer Dmitry from BWW wrote further about the browser options with QT:
"Also, I would clarify which browser options we have in case of Qt 5. The first option is provided by the qtwebkit submodule which uses a special version of the Apple's WebKit engine. This submodule is deprecated in Qt 5.6 but it still builds with Qt 5.9 and some patches. The second option is provided by the newer qtwebengine submodule which uses the Chromium browser project's engine. This engine is more powerful and has better conformance to the modern Web standards so it's the primary target of the Qt 5 roadmap. The WebKit-based submodule is a fallback option (and it's faster to port as it uses only Qt classes, while the Chromium engine has a number of external dependencies). "
* Another question that was raised is why was 10.000 Dollars set a target. The historical funding campaigns done by Netlabs
and BWW also just set the first target to reach. The total cost will be much higher, around 40.000 Euro at least.
While I can understand people do not like sponsoring a project of which the outcome is uncertain. Having worked in the OS/2 community on eCS, Warpstock events for close to 20 years I can only say one very simple thing. Uncertainty has always been part of using OS/2, eCS and ArcaOS in the sense that a small group of people are doing the work.
I hope this answers some of the outstanding questions. So while we reached our first goal. Lets see if we can collect more.
You can buy sponsor units here: https://www.arcanoae.com/shop/os2-voice-browser-sponsorship/
Best regards,
Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE