71–80 of 211 posts
is it useful for DOSbox?
Useful ? The next three weeks of HN will be: MS-DOS cross-compiled to JAVASCRIPT. MS-DOS running in pure CSS. Word for Windows as pure HTML 5 ( element). DOOM RUNNING NATIVELY on NATIVE MS-DOS on a PEBBLE.
What is funny is that MS-DOS 6.0 source code had already been leaked. Granting permission to IBM to make OS/2 source code available would be nice too BTW.
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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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.
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503, any mirror?
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
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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.
I wonder if they deleted all the "fucks" out of it. The Win2K source code was good for a laugh.
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Microsoft Research does some really cool stuff. Do they really work for the same company as the people who make Windows and Office? I can't imagine two more diametrically different organizations.
Bell Labs was founded by Ma Bell, it's hard to top that and MSR does not come close.
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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…
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.
What you are saying is like saying that putting Ford Model T blueprints to museum is useless because we have far better sources today to study car mechanics from.