OS/2 vs biew

Introduction
This article has goal do explain the question - why there is no binary distribution of biew for OS/2 operating system.

The story
This story began when I've lost the boot sector of HPFS partition on my system (that was my regular practice of those days). Unfortunatedly, I've lost copy of this sector too. Well, usually it's not a problem since almost all operating systems have an analog of 'SYS A: C:' in DOS. (Even more - NTFS contains the internal copy of this sector somewhere inside it). Well, I've tried to fix this problem somehow. I had set of installation diskettes (which everyone need to have to install OS/2 from CDROM (it's not a joke and bootable CDROMs are not OS/2's fortune). As usually I've selected command prompt after inserting of the 3rd diskette to execute 'chkdsk' and 'sysinstx' commands. But I was wonder when chkdsk stopped after the message 'Executing HPFS driver success' or similar! This meant that hpfs.ifs doesn't want to work with my slightly damaged partition. Furtermore, sysinstx always printed me message: 'Stop due internal error' or similar! Well, there was my last hope - 'fdisk'. I was amazed when only action which was suggested me from its side was 'Remove partition'. I was shocked!!! Mainly, because any other operating systems (including DOS with its ihpfs.exe) were able to work with this partition in read/write mode!!!
Only thing which I could to do was reformating this partition to install OS/2 from scratch. (Well, I've really have such possibility even now). But first, I wanted to know how many OS/2 world has been improved the last years and what is OS/2 future.

Are there reasons to continue biew for OS/2?
Traditionally, the first server which was visited by me was www.ibm.com Cool, I've found out there article about 'OS/2 Strategy for 2003'. But the information which I've read there was dramatical:
OS/2 Defect Support: IBM plans to provide Program defect support for OS/2 Warp 4 Convenience Packages and for Warp Server for e-business Convenience Packages through 31 December 2004 for customers with software subscriptions.

It means that IBM won't support this operating system in 2005! OK, let read this article more:
What are IBM's Recommendations?:
...

Briefly, IBM recommends using Internet technologies on both internal and external networks with server-centric business logic delivered by thin-client applications. Customers should exploit OS/2 e-business enhancements and deploy new e-business technology applications concurrently with existing OS/2 applications until platform neutrality has been achieved, and then change the operating system.

I'm sad! But it's condemnation. (Althrough, the idea of writing biew in Java is not bad but is too old and is not reacheable at this momemnt of time ;).

Well, I've looked at IBM's software casestudies and was shocked again! I was not able to find out any drivers for my modern hardware. It seems that drivers' repository has been frozen in 1998. You may not find out any drivers for modern video cards (except Nvidia) Yes, you still may use SciTech Display Doctor package but you still will not be able to use many features of your video card like:
3D acceleration! You may forget it! OS/2 will never support it. (I even was not able to find out driver for my SBLive 5.1 sound card!)
Althrough, I should say that it's amazing to see USB support there.
Thus! OS/2 doesn't have the future!!! IBM is terminating this operating system! Should we wait until 2005? No! We can do that earlier :(
Many people may object me: why you support DOS version of biew then?
My answer is: DOS version can be run under any operating systems on ix86 compatible CPUs. So you may conside it as java-like binary for Intel's processors only!

The OS/2 community
Regardless the fact that IBM going to terminate any OS/2 support soon there are many teams of OS/2 developers and users which don't want to break own habits and continue the living with beloved environment:
http://www.os2.ru/team2/index.phtml.en
http://www.teamos2.org
These guys still spend enforces to write some beatuful software and new drivers for OS/2. It's amazing! But what they can do for the future of OS/2? They have no sources for all critical components of the system (like: Kernel, DOSCALL1.DLL, HPFS driver and many more).
By rumours, there were ideas to rewrite OS/2 from scratch (to make something like FreeOS/2). Fittingly of respect! But, IN MY OPINION, it would be better to port OS/2 interface (mainly for console) on Linux. The linux has achieved the perfect stability (unlike Windows and OS/2 kernels) but has slightly user-unfriendly terminals only (that IMHO is main reason of continuing of OS/2 usage by many people)! Althrough today we can watch reverse processes: porting Unix environment on OS/2 (Main example is porting of X11 project on OS/2 to have 2D, 3D and video acceleration on modern video cards)! One question: for what? There is unix culture and OS/2 culture and they are mainly incompatible! (X11 brings unix culture over OS/2!) But users don't work with kernels directly - they work with software which constitute interface. So for me it's unclear - why OS/2 users are agree to leave custom environment and use non-native interface to be with unstable kernel!!?
Well, they are my opinions only!

The workaround
Currently, it's unbelievable that there are OS/2 users only. The OS/2 community mainly consists from developers! I want to tell which steps they should do to build biew binary for OS/2:
First, you should have installed EMX projects! To build biew you should have installed: If you have correctly installed these components then you should modify 'makefile' within of biew distribution to select:
TARGET_PLATFORM=i386 (or any other depends on your CPU)
TARGET_OS=os2
Conclusion
It's not a secret that IBM has invested 3e+09 bucks to Linux! The linux is favorite operating system of IBM. You may find out some interesting article here.
If you love OS/2 then you are not able to delay its end. I'm ex- OS/2 user too! I like OS/2 culture. But it doesn't mean that I will use this "the big blue elephant" until the end of my life having no improvements in stabilty and performance, without support of new modern hardware. IBM corporation has selected linux. Well, probably they are right! I prefer linux too for now!
Enjoy!

P.S.
biew-5.5.0 for OS/2 now is available from download page thanks to Max Alekseyev! We had a long discussion about this article! He pointed me many interested projects for OS/2:
http://www.ecomstation.com
http://sound.netlabs.org/
ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub
All they argue with this article. But my main argument was
IBM against OS/2!!!
And it seems that this is truth.

P.P.S.
My final note: if OS/2 community will support biew then I'm not against of that!!!
From http://biew.sourceforge.net/en/os2_vs_biew.html