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Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public

blogs.technet.com

31–40 of 211 posts

Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public

#31
post #16
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Research License. Yes, Yes, No.

How can a license allow modification without redistribution?

It's sometimes hard to believe, but our current laws seems to allow that you can be forbidden from modifying a piece of software even for your own personal use.

Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public

#32
post #16
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Research License. Yes, Yes, No.

How can a license allow modification without redistribution?

So you can't publish a modified version.

But can you publish a diff, which someone could use to recreate your modified version?

Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public

#33
post #24
post #10

Under what license? Can we view, modify, redistribute? No one wants to get sued for these things, or being found to violate some end user license agreement with some other Microsoft software. On the other hand, I'd love to find out that people viewing this code contribute an improvement that no one in Microsoft saw in decades that helps them improve something today, leading them to soften their stance on Free Softwar…

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…

Don't patents only last 15-20 years?

Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public

#36
post #10

Under what license? Can we view, modify, redistribute? No one wants to get sued for these things, or being found to violate some end user license agreement with some other Microsoft software. On the other hand, I'd love to find out that people viewing this code contribute an improvement that no one in Microsoft saw in decades that helps them improve something today, leading them to soften their stance on Free Softwar…

For novelty purposes only™

No redistribution and the license can be revoked.

(also: must be research or education, mustn't be commercial, and you are licensing derivative works to Microsoft somehow)

Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public

#38
post #24

Earlier 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…

Don't patents only last 15-20 years?

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public

#39
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can a license allow modification without redistribution?

Why do you have to redistribute something in order to modify it? Just modify it for your own personal use.

I can't think of a single use case where I would want to hack on a 32 year old OS without distributing it.

Re: Microsoft makes source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows available to public

#40
post #20

Windows source code was available for a long time. My university had access to Win 2000 and some latter versions. Nobody was interested since most kernel hackers used BSD and later Linux.

This is true. It leaked from Mainsoft a few years back. Was great fun reading through the NT4 and 2k source. It has also been useful for working out what the hell goes on inside Win32 on occasion.
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