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Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
141–150 of 218 posts
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#142At some point, we'll probably have a new field in history for digital archeology , and I'm really envious for those future historians! They'll be getting to sleuth around old datasets, trying to reconstruct the history of computing, understand long-forgotten file formats to preserve data, use statistical methods to analyse binary backups, and trace for specific documentation versions to crack old encryption formats..…
The term "programmer-archaeologist" was coined by the author Vernor Vinge in his 1999 "A Deepness in the Sky"[0] (a pretty great read and definitely recommended) and the field is arguably a real thing now[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_archaeology
Thank you for the recommendation! I'm definitely aware of many initiatives into that direction, but I'm still curious when it'll invariably arrive as a real discipline not in computer science, but humanities.
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#143I cannot describe to you how jealous I am of the fact that back then writing a few thousand lines of assembly was what it took to launch a successful software company.
My take-away is kind of the opposite. You literally have to be the right person in the right place at the right time.
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did they print it then, I wonder?
They had some old German guy with a big beard, and two interns, running some sort of big contraption that looked like a medieval torture instrument, and the interns would run and put letters in a row and then the old guy move a massive letter and in the end out came a bit of paper with source code on it.
I appreciate the subtle sarcasm, I did not consider a printing press as an option!
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the case of Microsoft, I'm not seeing it. Being born into a 1% household and understanding the asymmetric upside that having the money and the time to speculate is far more significant than the civil and criminal legal violations on the way. The most common way to go from one-percenter rich to .001% rich is to already have enough wealthy people generating capital in your personal network that you can raise capital…
We need a better system. We tried communism and that was shit, so this is the least bad system we have.
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#146This is nearly a month old
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#147I wonder how long it'll be before they release the source for the earliest Windows versions. The fact that they still have the source for this very old DOS at least gives hope that they also do for old Windows.
The day they would make Windows 2000 codebase open source (or source available) would be the day I could die happy (although I'd probably be long dead anyways by the time there's a glimmerof chance of it happening). What a beautiful, smooth-running operating system it was.
And what would you do with the Windows 2000 source? It's 32 bit x86 code and the driver model for Windows has changed significantly since those days so it wouldn't run on modern x86-64 hardware anyway. Maybe it would run in a VM but I wouldn't care to bet on it.
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine if the University had sued for their share of the IP and that was created using their resources… It’s funny because I thought Jobs/Wozinak got their initial funding from selling phreaking boxes. And more recently, Anthropic engaged in criminal copyright violations with only a slap on the wrist. Feels like a common theme of every “great” company having its origins from a “boost” resulting from criminal activit…
In the case of Microsoft, I'm not seeing it. Being born into a 1% household and understanding the asymmetric upside that having the money and the time to speculate is far more significant than the civil and criminal legal violations on the way. The most common way to go from one-percenter rich to .001% rich is to already have enough wealthy people generating capital in your personal network that you can raise capital…
I think you overstate the power of money. Of course it helps. But it’s far from everything. Just look at the number of rich kid fuckups or CEOs with poor backgrounds. It’s just one component that smooths risk and occasionally provides a starter network, but it’s not everything.
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the case of Microsoft, I'm not seeing it. Being born into a 1% household and understanding the asymmetric upside that having the money and the time to speculate is far more significant than the civil and criminal legal violations on the way. The most common way to go from one-percenter rich to .001% rich is to already have enough wealthy people generating capital in your personal network that you can raise capital…
We need a better system. We tried communism and that was shit, so this is the least bad system we have.
We didn't try communism as far as I know. We hunted it down and murdered it in its cradle if I'm reading the CIA declassified archives correctly.
Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, basically all facts in this story are disputed by all sides. Aside from general gist that there was some meeting that didn't go well.
Whether Kildall actually blew IBM off at that meeting or not, what was definitely the case was that CP/M didn't have a 16-bit version ready to meet IBM's schedule, and that's what ultimately took them out of the running.
If you watch the documentary it’s an interview with the people who were there. There might be some discrepancy but I think the IBM guys were being honest about how it went down. The doc is on the Internet archive and worth a watch.
You get the idea that it wasn’t some brilliant business strategy by Microsoft, the deal for the operating system wasn’t that good for them initially.
From the transcript: https://www.pbs.org/nerds/part2.html
Jack Sams (IBM):
Gary had some other plans and so he said well, Dorothy will see you. So we went down the three of us...
Gordon Eubanks Former Head of Language Division, Digital Research: IBM showed up with an IBM non-disclosure and Dorothy made what I...a decision which I think it's easy in retrospect to say was dumb.
Jack Sams: We popped out our letter that said please don't tell anybody we're here, and we don't want to hear anything confidential. And she read it and said and I can't sign this.
Gordon Eubanks: She did what her job was, she got the lawyer to look at the nondisclosure. The lawyer, Gerry Davis who's still in Monterey threw up on this non-disclosure. It was uncomfortable for IBM, they weren't used to waiting. And it was unfortunate situation - here you are in a tiny Victorian House, its overrun with people, chaotic.
Jack Sams: So we spent the whole day in Pacific Grove debating with them and with our attorneys and her attorneys and everybody else about whether or not she could even talk to us about talking to us, and we left.
………. Bill Gates: Digital research didn't seize that, and we knew it was essential, if somebody didn't do it, the project was going to fall apart.
Steve Ballmer: We just got carried away and said look, we can't afford to lose the language business. That was the initial thought - we can't afford to have IBM not go forward. This is the most exciting thing that's going to happen in PCs.
Bill Gates: And we were already out on a limb, because we had licensed them not only Basic, but Fortran, Cobol Assembler er, typing tutor and Venture. And basically every - every product the company had we had committed to do for IBM in a very short time frame.