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Open Sourcing DOS 4

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Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#221

Post by HeckFeck »

NewsaHackO wrote: post #129
moody__ wrote: 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.

I think I lost it when they suggested we stop using the term 'sanity check' or 'sane defaults' because they might offend, well, brain damaged people.

I am close to writing a browser extension that does a find and replace to reverse change these imposed, humourless, coddled changes.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#222

Post by rep_lodsb »

rnd0 wrote: post #35
dosman33 wrote: post #31

MSDOS 4 was reportedly an overall bad release and was not in wide circulation, in all my days I think I only came across it once. This is why DOS 3.3 and 5.0 were much more common to find in circulation together. I'm sure the source for 4 will make for some interesting bug hunting. Anyone remember the MUF list? "Microsofts Undocumented Features".

This is "multitasking dos 4" though, which isn't the same as the much-reviled ms-dos 4. As I understand it, it's a lot closer to dos 3 than it is to dos 4 in terms of functionality. I wouldn't expect this to understand extended partitions, much less large partitions (that dos 4 uses)

>I wouldn't expect this to understand extended partitions, much less large partitions (that dos 4 uses)

Most of the source code (everything outside of -ozzie) is for regular DOS 4.0 and supports 32-bit sector numbers. They planned to add it in the multitasking version as well [1], but from reading IBMDSK.ASM it isn't there yet.

Also that driver talks directly to the hard disk controller instead of going through the ROM BIOS, and will only support XT drives, not IDE/ATA. Apparently the goal was to be able to do background I/O on an XT, where there is no BIOS support for that.

[1] see driver docs at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/main/v4.0...

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#223

Post by Someone »

NewsaHackO wrote: post #129
moody__ wrote: 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.

Legal also may be concerned that having source makes it easier to detect patent infringement and code copying. Even if you deem the risk zero that that actually happened, why run the risk of somebody claiming you did?

For the company there are as good as zero downsides to not doing anything, and a few small upsides and a few low risk, but potentially very costly (in dollars or reputation) if they happen downsides.

That makes not doing anything the default choice for the company.

For (former) employees who worked on this, the upsides are higher; they’ll get some of their work published for the first time. That’s why we see individuals push for this every now and then.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#224

Post by chucky »

skissane wrote: post #180
chucky wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be a problem for DOS 4, but often the source code of software that was only ever meant to be published as closed source contains source code that was licensed from 3rd parties. This license may not allow publishing the source code. Doing an investigation of what licensed software was used and possibly trying to get permission from the relevant rights holders (if you can even figure out who owns the right…

For DOS, I believe the core was only ever Microsoft or IBM. Some DOS versions bundled add-ons by third parties, but they are hardly essential for operation - e.g. MS-DOS 6 included DEFRAG and MSBACKUP (both licensed from Symantec) and MSAV (licensed from Central Point Software) Similarly, with Windows, the third-party components are generally inessentials such as certain device drivers, games, some optional system co…

Yeah, but it's the "mostly" and "I think" that will cause lawyers to start sweating and force someone to do a bigger and more expensive investigation.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#226

Post by rep_lodsb »

msoad wrote: post #206

Some fun things I found in the source code * "TWIDDLE" [1] ; DO THE 2 SECOND TWIDDLE. IF TIME >= 2 SECONDS, DO A VOLID CHECK. * "This is my employee serial!" [2] db '21',0,0 ;J.K. 11/8/86 This is my employee serial # !!! * Lots os "brain damaged comments [3] [1][ https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/2d04cacc5322951f187... ] [2] https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/2d04cacc5322951f187... [3] https://github.com…

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20190924-00/?p=10...

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#227

Post by lproven »

skissane wrote: post #180
chucky wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be a problem for DOS 4, but often the source code of software that was only ever meant to be published as closed source contains source code that was licensed from 3rd parties. This license may not allow publishing the source code. Doing an investigation of what licensed software was used and possibly trying to get permission from the relevant rights holders (if you can even figure out who owns the right…

For DOS, I believe the core was only ever Microsoft or IBM. Some DOS versions bundled add-ons by third parties, but they are hardly essential for operation - e.g. MS-DOS 6 included DEFRAG and MSBACKUP (both licensed from Symantec) and MSAV (licensed from Central Point Software) Similarly, with Windows, the third-party components are generally inessentials such as certain device drivers, games, some optional system co…

Agreed.

From MS-DOS 6, remove the defrag, backup and antivirus programs, and DoubleSpace/DriveSpace, and that should I think cover all external code.

If I remember correctly, it didn't include CD-ROM drivers, just MSCDEX to run on top of one... and the network stack was an optional extra. I'm not even 100% sure it includes a mouse driver as standard.

IBM PC DOS 6.3, 7.0 and 7.1 include some additional IBM code: Rexx in place of QBASIC, the IBM E editor, but not much else.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#228

Post by lproven »

chucky wrote: post #224
skissane wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For DOS, I believe the core was only ever Microsoft or IBM. Some DOS versions bundled add-ons by third parties, but they are hardly essential for operation - e.g. MS-DOS 6 included DEFRAG and MSBACKUP (both licensed from Symantec) and MSAV (licensed from Central Point Software) Similarly, with Windows, the third-party components are generally inessentials such as certain device drivers, games, some optional system co…

Yeah, but it's the "mostly" and "I think" that will cause lawyers to start sweating and force someone to do a bigger and more expensive investigation.

DOS is relatively speaking tiny and actually pretty modular. You can delete a handful of files, mostly binaries and some help files, and that's it, code gone.

From the source it's a little different but there's little integration between the bits.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#229

Post by AshamedCaptain »

JoachimS wrote: post #170
elwell wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you can't even say "sanity check", much less mention brain damage.

And please don't use 'brain dead', which is a mortuist expression. Using 'brain dead' in a negative way may be insensitive to zombies. Also avoid the expression 'zombie process' or the word 'expired'. You don't want to step on the toes of a zombie do you? (It's probably gross.)

The google guidelines already prevent something like "hung process" because of the "unnecessary violence" rule.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#230

Post by lproven »

jmspring wrote: post #119

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.

> My brain is rusty

It is. Because:

> but I feel like MSDOS 5.11 was where things finally just worked

There was no MS-DOS 5.11.

It went 4, 4.01, 5, 6, 6.2, 6.21, 6.22.

IBM had a few extra versions as the divorce was occurring at the time.

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