Not having an ability to view the source online was driving me insane. Hopefully I scratched your itch too. https://github.com/Incognito/msdos
I am waiting for people to send Pull Request on that (for \ vs / for instance)
Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
161–170 of 211 posts
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, any patents from 1983 and 1991 have expired. Besides which, I don't think Microsoft had any patents in 1983. P.S. Google Patents is useless for answering this question. "Referenced by" is included in the search, so any patent from 1983 that is ever referenced by a Microsoft patent (from any year) shows up in the results.
Nope, none in 1983. I did an advanced search at USPTO for "AN/microsoft and ISD/19750101->19890101" (patents assigned to Microsoft and issued between 1975 and 1989). All it found were: 4,779,187 - Method and operating system for executing programs in a multi-mode microprocessor (filed April 10, 1985, issued October 18, 1988) 4,588,074 - Holder for storing and supporting articles (filed March 21, 1985, issued May 13,…
Thanks for doing the search.
As for:
> 4,588,074 - Holder for storing and supporting articles ... Yes, if I understand it correctly, Microsoft's first patent
At one point, Microsoft Press was a big player in the publishing market. For example, Peter Norton's book on the IBM PC was published by Microsoft Press.
I imagine they needed a way to store multi-volume sets together.
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#163Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#164I wonder if they deleted all the "fucks" out of it. The Win2K source code was good for a laugh.
May I ask how common is this uncouth behaviour? I do remember this [0] being posted a few months ago, apparently "penguin" is an expletive (what the fuck?).
Uh, it seems that you forgot to include the source you're referencing...
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't patents only last 15-20 years?
Right, any patents from 1983 and 1991 have expired. Besides which, I don't think Microsoft had any patents in 1983. P.S. Google Patents is useless for answering this question. "Referenced by" is included in the search, so any patent from 1983 that is ever referenced by a Microsoft patent (from any year) shows up in the results.
The USPTO has a patent search for the US Patent and Trademark Office at http://patft.uspto.gov/.
As for MSFT not having any patents in 1983, this is largely the result of the policy of not patenting "abstract ideas" that was argued in the courts at the time. The United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and the PTO were in opposing positions regarding the patentability of inventions that were essentially algorithmic.
The key log that stopped discouraging patent applications for software was Diamond v. Diehr in 1981, which involved applying a mathematical formula to a database of information for operating rubber curing machines under computer control.[1]
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has largely followed this method since this decision. Between the early 70s[2] and Diehr, SCOTUS settled disputes when Customs and Patent Appeals attempted to overrule the PTO and its Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences/Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
[0] I'm lazy, you get wikipedia. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Diehr [2] Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63 (1972), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschalk_v._Benson
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, any patents from 1983 and 1991 have expired. Besides which, I don't think Microsoft had any patents in 1983. P.S. Google Patents is useless for answering this question. "Referenced by" is included in the search, so any patent from 1983 that is ever referenced by a Microsoft patent (from any year) shows up in the results.
You can use the "inassignee" and "ininventor" operators to restrict the search, e.g. inassignee:microsoft.
Thanks for the tip.
I finally found the link to Advanced Search. It's off the Settings menu. I could swear it used to be right there next to the Search button ...
I guess I've just been using memorized operators on Google, and haven't actually looked for the Advanced Search link in quite a while.
It's like what Microsoft does with configuration dialogs. They design a new UI, but it doesn't do 100% of the what old UI did. So they keep the old UI, and shove it one level down. Then in another few years, they'll design yet another new UI, and I'll have to click two levels down ...
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couldn't they pick any piece of code you write that happens to looks similar to some piece of code in MS-DOS and argue that it is in fact derived from their code, if it's known that you previously read the MS-DOS code? Sort of like the "rangeCheck" portion of the Google v. Oracle case. With patents it doesn't matter whether you read their code or not: you're screwed in any case. But with copyright the history of the…
> Couldn't they pick any piece of code you write that happens to looks similar to some piece of code in MS-DOS and argue that it is in fact derived from their code, if it's known that you previously read the MS-DOS code? You write a lot of MASM code, such that this is actually a risk for you? Maybe it's possible? I'm not a lawyer but I think at some point early in the process, in order to move forward, they'd have to…
>> With patents it doesn't matter whether you read their code or not: you're screwed in any case.
> Okay, forget the rest and focus on this: you need to familiarize yourself with the concepts of willful infringement and treble damages.
> [...]
> Whether the code you've read is patented or not is actually trivia. Whether you knew it was covered by a specific patent is important.
So we're in agreement then? :) Yes, good point about knowingly infringing a patent, but, as I said (or meant to say), reading or not reading the source code has no effect on the patent situation. (But I'm not a lawyer either, so what do I know.)
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
An OS doesn't need to have networking, permissions, or anything else. It just needs to provide a common set of services for applications programs to use. Consider that OSs started out as libraries of functions that programs could call into, which then evolved into job managers, that is where MS-DOS fits. It's single-tasking, single-address-space, but it already has the concept of processes, drivers, files. This is st…
Really though, wasn't most of DOS just thin abstractions on BIOS interfaces? What hardware abstractions did it provide other than the filesystem, and what services other than an ABI allowing you to quit a program without rebooting?
It abstracted the character-at-a-time BIOS interfaces to a line-buffered text console.
It provided a memory allocator service.
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Other notable facts that year : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_(programming_language)...
Literally everything on HN is an opportunity for another Haskell advertisement.
I won't disagree, but I realized that even before I got a computer, Haskell was officially born. It baffles me that this very advanced gem was already there, yet so few knew.
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only are you not allowed to distribute it by the license, actually distributing it would get you sued for patent violation. Using anything you find in the code will probably get you sued for patent violation, too. EDIT: I can just imagine a future lawsuit: A: Did you read the MS-DOS source code released by Microsoft on XX? We have logs to show you downloaded it. B: Yes, but that has nothing to do with this lawsui…
Please up vote the point of patents lasting 15-20 years and down vote this confused claim. Software patents are bad enough without gratuitous fear-inducing claims added.
It's like I stumbled into r/technology.