Meh, I'll be interested when they release the source from the "fuck over DR-DOS" era. Maybe when the statute of limitations for antitrust expires...
Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
191–200 of 211 posts
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#192I think making IE open source will be very interesting....!
Maybe in the same way a tour of a sausage factory would be interesting....
I have been on a tour of a sausage factory. It is extremely interesting. For example, all pigs are required to be of a length, weight, and several other dimensions, in order to be approved to join the production line.
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here you go: * https://mega.co.nz/#F!jAhUzLCC!2i187wbXL7WUF3587YaMfw * http://www.sendspace.com/filegroup/61DF3FLY3Z3pnWTHQMzcRQ SHA-256: ed62a98801f15cf9b7f229e33c7413d1ff9d1e1e91e9aa2468742589b65e156d msdos.zip b424c3c1c1d7083cc74c9b1b77823eb511739c4237cb7a2f1650b75391f43ff6 Word-1.1a-CHM-Distribution.zip
Those are not legal, redistribution is not permitted by the license.
IS it really redistribution or network caching ;-)
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#194Finally the word soure code has been released! I have been waiting so long for this blessed moment!
Why the ---- does this have 656 upvotes? Microsoft PR campaign anyone?
"Microsoft had under 100 employees and a Microsoft product (MS-DOS) had less than 300KB". Yeah, that is still alot of employees compared to new software companies today. And the sourcecode? Well resources for software development were much scarce back then, both computer and human wise.
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#195In the syscall docs under "C A V E A T P R O G R A M M E R"
> Certain structures, constants and system calls below
> are private to the DOS and are extremely
> version-dependent. They may change at any time at the
> implementors' whim.
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Sorry, here you go.
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
MS-DOS is maybe the ugliest operating system I ever had the displeasure of using. There's very little to learn from operating system design point of view in there, and better sources are available under more permissive licenses -- ie open source licenses. It looks like a PR stunt to me.
> There's very little to learn from operating system design point of view in there ... I understand your point, but in one important sense, this release has value. Someday, a scholar is going to write the history of drive letters and their perverse effect on all of computing -- up to the present day, where they're buried under a thin patina of respectability in the newest versions of Windows. Under Windows, including…
Err MSDOS was a rough CP/M clone and CP/M did have drive letters. CP/M picked up some stuff from RSX-11 (pip for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Interchange_Program) and that's why the Windows/MSDOS command option is usually / as it was on a pdp-11 (backwards compatibility to BEFORE unix)
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
MS-DOS is maybe the ugliest operating system I ever had the displeasure of using. There's very little to learn from operating system design point of view in there, and better sources are available under more permissive licenses -- ie open source licenses. It looks like a PR stunt to me.
It served it's purpose for it's time. When I had an 8088 computer, MS-DOS was great enough for me, it was simple, fun to understand and work with. Like any OS it had it's quirks, but it got out of the way. Yes, minix ran on 286, so MS could have/should have, but that was then. Don't judge them too harsh.
> Yes, minix ran on 286
Minix 1.0 ran on a 8086/8088
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#199This tidbit from the DOS 2.0 README.txt (section 5) is fascinating: The user manual contains some significant errors. Most of these are due to last minute changes to achieve a greater degree of compatibility with IBM's implementation of MS-DOS (PC DOS). This includes the use of "\" instead of "/" as the path separator, and "/" instead of "-" as the switch character. For transporting of batch files across machines, Mi…
It's interesting to see the real specification for this system call, as only the device availability subfunctions were widely known outside of Microsoft [1]. I wonder if many other hidden or deprecated functions are present in these releases. [1] http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/id/65/27.html
At the time I seem to recall this was documented as being the SWITCHAR in config.sys certainly by MSDOS3.x this was well known and I seem to recall trying it out on MSDOS 2.x on a commodore pc clone (in Sweden) this would have been around 1985ish
Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public
#200This tidbit from the DOS 2.0 README.txt (section 5) is fascinating: The user manual contains some significant errors. Most of these are due to last minute changes to achieve a greater degree of compatibility with IBM's implementation of MS-DOS (PC DOS). This includes the use of "\" instead of "/" as the path separator, and "/" instead of "-" as the switch character. For transporting of batch files across machines, Mi…
And to this day we're still barred from creating files or directories named CON, PRN, NUL ... Damn you, IBM
Not just CON but also con.txt, con.js, etc.! Try cloning a git repository with a file called con.js using msysgit. The result is that, when msysgit tries to clone the file, the contents of the file `con.js` are printed to stdout, i.e. to CON.