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Open Sourcing DOS 4

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Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#131

My brain is rusty, but I feel like MSDOS 5.11 was where things finally just worked. TSRs, memory managers, etc. Moving a lot and not being a packrat I've lost some of that history. It'd be interesting to see 5.x and 6.x released.

I think it was 3.3x where things started working. I don't recall 4.x being around much. I do remember 5 and 6. For some reason 4 never made a splash in my circle of friends.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#132

My brain is rusty, but I feel like MSDOS 5.11 was where things finally just worked. TSRs, memory managers, etc. Moving a lot and not being a packrat I've lost some of that history. It'd be interesting to see 5.x and 6.x released.

IIRC 6.22 was the pinnacle of MS-DOS, with all the comfort and niceties one could expect at the time. Then began the Windows era.

6.22 would likely be what I was remembering.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#133
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Other terms are neither more descriptive nor more neutral. 2. If someone has a problem with the term "sanity check", they are overly sensitive and they need to adjust to the realities of life. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to coddle them.

Can we please change PHP's die() function to unalive()?

unalive() offends me, let’s do sunset() instead

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#134
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's valid feedback. There is no clock, but there maybe should be. In this case, yes, Jeff and I had to PUSH. And that's a hassle. I'll ask around.

I appreciate your hard work on open sourcing this! If you’re taking requests I’d love to see MS-DOS 5.0 or at least QBasic next.

Yep, I need to get 3.3 and then do 5, 6

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#135
post #73

I appreciate the work in getting this open sourced but I find it telling that this had to be done through an outside motivator. There seems to be no internal "ticking clock" to get some of these things out in to the open. That's fine no one is owed the source code for this stuff or anything, but it would be nice if there was more interest on the side of the companies to get some of their formative history out so peop…

For some insight, look how people are combing for curse words/ devs making jokes about people being brain damaged etc. There is no upside for the company, and all that has to happen is some unsavory politically incorrect joke to get missed from sanitization and the are on the cancelled chopping block.

The "cancel" stuff only comes from a tiny minority of vocal extremists. Everyone else is entirely unfazed.

Of all the things people here probably hate about the current "modern" Microsoft and its products, political incorrectness in decades-old code is far down the list or not even a consideration.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#136
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IF running software is what matters, there's dosemu2 and dosbox-x. For the actual hardware or PCem, FreeDOS exists and is alive. DR-DOS has also been open sourced.

DR-DOS hasn't been open sourced. Caldera did release the source for the kernel and a few other bits, but the license only allowed free use for evaluation purposes. After 90 days (for a company) or "a reasonable period" for non-commercial entities you were required to buy a license. Bryan Sparks did open-source CP/M a little while back, but AFAIK he hasn't said anything about DR-DOS so far.

There was an actual open source version, which was retracted[0].

Fortunately for the commons, what's done is done.

0. https://archiveos.org/drdos/

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#137
post #2

I guess now we can finally try to understand what went wrong with the multitasking attempt.

Graphics. Managers wanted "windowing systems" as well as multitasking. People who just wanted mutitasking DOS had DesqView and ... "concurrent"? was it? i forget. I wrote TSR's that snatched cycles off the timer interrupt and rode 21h for opportunity to flush buffers to/from disk.

> I wrote TSR's that snatched cycles off the timer interrupt

We've all been there. How else could you get anything interesting done back in the day?

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#138
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Other terms are neither more descriptive nor more neutral. 2. If someone has a problem with the term "sanity check", they are overly sensitive and they need to adjust to the realities of life. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to coddle them.

Can we please change PHP's die() function to unalive()?

It's been synonymous with exit() since at least PHP 4.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who recently asked our QA team to change the name of one of our test suites from "sanity test" to "quick test", maybe I can provide some perspective. Many software developers like me have faced challenges to our mental health. Indeed, there has been a time or two when I questioned my own sanity. And perhaps the sanity of some of my colleagues! It's not so much that there is something inherently wrong with…

> It's just that there are more descriptive and neutral terms available to us, so why not use them? Because it's boring.

Walter, you and I have known each other for a long time. Not in person; we've never met. But through our interactions here on HN.

I have a lot of respect for you and for everything you have accomplished.

So I have to ask you directly: Is being "boring" or not the way we should decide how to express ourselves?

Regarding a "quick test" vs. a "sanity test". Instead of judging this on what is "boring", why can't we make a choice on which is more respectful to our peers and colleagues?

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#140
post #133
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please change PHP's die() function to unalive()?

unalive() offends me, let’s do sunset() instead

sunset() triggers me due to all the times I've seen companies "sunset" APIs only to still have them in production 5 years later.

Let's change it to cancelled()

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