Some Answers...
First I should declare an interest - you'll find me on the "About Arca Noae" page on www.arcanoa.com
Secondly, I want to answer a few of the comments on this thread.
Blue Lion will not be free, but it certainly won't be "very expensive" - it probably won't be "expensive" either! When we do release prices, I think a lot of people will be pleasantly surprised.
Running current Windows software: Very hard, as MS have a lot of it very much locked in, using facilities in their operating systems that are not easy, or even possible, to provide in others without treading on IP issues.
But a lot of modern software isn't "Windows software", it's written for other systems such as Linux, and is often open-source, so producing a version that runs under OS/2 is feasible, and to prove that my daily-use machine under eComStation is running Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice 4.1, CUPS printing, and Lucide (.PDF viewer) as well as a lot of software written specifically for OS/2, such as ClipView (saves the last "n" Copies to the clipboard so I can go back to a previous one and paste it), PMView (picture viewer, converter, and simple image editor), EasySync (file synchroniser), LANscan (scans IP addresses so I can find where a device I've just connected to the network has ended up), OpenSSH (so I can communicate with my headless Raspberry Pis, for example) and lots of others.
As for "why bare metal"? Because it's the best way! All the CPU cycles are doing what you want, not having to administer things "above" the operating system(s). When I go to the shops I drive my car, I don't get it towed there...
As for time-to-boot, this may have been a problem in the '90s, but not these days.
As others have said, in the early days OS/2 needed "a lot" of RAM - I think 4MB was stated as the minimum, whereas Win95 said it needed less, but now it's turned round - I am typing this on a machine running three major applications, and which has less memory installed than Windows XP needs just to load without any applications! I haven't run Win10 so I have no idea how that compares.
Is Blue Lion going to replace Windows in the market? No of course not. Is it going to be popular with people who like OS/2 and want to run it, or who are curious to try something that isn't from Redmond? Certainly!
Cheers,
Howard