OS/2 in 2018 - 2 companies and the community
28.08.2018
In the current situation and in the remaining OS/2 market, the 2 major players are:
  • ArcaNoae LLC (in short "AN")
    • they put things together, develop drivers and they are entitled to sell ArcaOS direct or via resellers.
  • bww bitwise works GmbH (in short "bitwise")
    • creates software to make ArcaOS usable. "Bitwise" develops and maintains a default toolchain to create software for all flavors of OS/2 (plain OS/2 4.5, eComStation 1.x and 2.x and ArcaOS 5.x).
    • "Bitwise" main emphasis is on providing open source software by porting various libraries, toolkits and programs. The biggest part found at the available RPM Wiki is work of "bitwise".
    • In addition "bitwise" is working on InJoy Firewall, a closed source project providing security to OS/2.
All money in "bitwise" is used to pay the developer costs for bigger projects (AOO, Java, Qt and Firefox). Our most notable developers are Dmitry Kuminov and Yuri Dario. Herwig Bauernfeind and most notably Silvan Scherrer work more or less for free.

Recently income for development projects like Firefox, which we did partialy for "AN" and other consultancy projects has dropped. Since then we don't have a flowing source of income and this is one of the reasons you see more sponsorship campaigns from different sources, where the campaigns from OS/2 VOICE are most probably the most known ones.
We know we have been too silent during the last couple of years, but we invested most of the time in development.

"Bitwise" main goal is to provide as much software as possible for free, but we cannot do so without the help of the community. We need as many sponsors as possible or sales through our webshop - as to say lightely: "Free software does not grow on trees".

Overall the best way to support "bitwise" and the open source idea on OS/2 is to become a sponsor and buy development units or other articles (including ArcaOS) in our webshop. If you buy, as example, ArcaOS in our webshop, a part of the sale stays in "bitwise", the rest goes to "AN".

A completely different way to support us, is our channel at patreon. Supporters on patreon will receive little special gimmicks from time to time, not available otherwise.

OS/2 is, and has always been our passion! Help us to create more and better software for it for a longer period of time!
Qt 5 donation meter
16.08.2018
Below you find the current state of all fundraising campaigns to port Qt 5 to OS/2
We estiminated that we need around 42000 €.
As of 24.09.2018 we collected 15796 €.

38%
Please help us to reach our goal.