I appreciate the work in getting this open sourced but I find it telling that this had to be done through an outside motivator. There seems to be no internal "ticking clock" to get some of these things out in to the open. That's fine no one is owed the source code for this stuff or anything, but it would be nice if there was more interest on the side of the companies to get some of their formative history out so people can learn from it.
This is fantastic work, thanks. Hmm, what else... let's see... Xenix also really, really wants to be free! What a magnificent piece of forgotten computer history it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
DOS 5 was when I really got into computers. I spent hours pouring through the included manual learning all the shell commands and learning how to write .BAT files. Then I discovered QBasic and it changed everything.
It's fantastic work you've done. As someone who works at a older software company (founded early 80s), I'm sad that there isn't a push internally for us to make our old software source available, or even just the binaries available!
What sort of tactics did you use to convince them? Maybe I can apply them to where I work too...
It might not be a problem for DOS 4, but often the source code of software that was only ever meant to be published as closed source contains source code that was licensed from 3rd parties. This license may not allow publishing the source code.
Doing an investigation of what licensed software was used and possibly trying to get permission from the relevant rights holders (if you can even figure out who owns the rights so many years later) can be a big and expensive task, unfortunately. I understand why companies might not want to take that on (even though it sucks).
For DOS, I believe the core was only ever Microsoft or IBM. Some DOS versions bundled add-ons by third parties, but they are hardly essential for operation - e.g. MS-DOS 6 included DEFRAG and MSBACKUP (both licensed from Symantec) and MSAV (licensed from Central Point Software)
Similarly, with Windows, the third-party components are generally inessentials such as certain device drivers, games, some optional system components like the ZIP file support in Windows Explorer-you would still have a usable OS with these bits ripped out. Parts of NTVDM are third-party licensed, although I believe that’s mainly the software CPU emulator used on RISC platforms, I think x86 was mostly Microsoft’s own code
From MS-DOS 6, remove the defrag, backup and antivirus programs, and DoubleSpace/DriveSpace, and that should I think cover all external code.
If I remember correctly, it didn't include CD-ROM drivers, just MSCDEX to run on top of one... and the network stack was an optional extra. I'm not even 100% sure it includes a mouse driver as standard.
IBM PC DOS 6.3, 7.0 and 7.1 include some additional IBM code: Rexx in place of QBASIC, the IBM E editor, but not much else.
Isn't the zip support in explorer the stuff written by Dave Plummer? I would imagine MS has the rights to that already, and if they don't, I'd imagine Dave would, and I'm sure he'd be fine with it being released.
He has lots of YouTube videos about the zip stuff.
DOS is relatively speaking tiny and actually pretty modular. You can delete a handful of files, mostly binaries and some help files, and that's it, code gone.
From the source it's a little different but there's little integration between the bits.
For some insight, look how people are combing for curse words/ devs making jokes about people being brain damaged etc. There is no upside for the company, and all that has to happen is some unsavory politically incorrect joke to get missed from sanitization and the are on the cancelled chopping block.
The "cancel" stuff only comes from a tiny minority of vocal extremists. Everyone else is entirely unfazed.
Of all the things people here probably hate about the current "modern" Microsoft and its products, political incorrectness in decades-old code is far down the list or not even a consideration.
It is about 'risk'. These companies are deeply afraid of being outed that way. They do not want to end up in court over something silly. Just remember a bottle of windex has the words 'do not drink' on it. 99.99% of people out there would not have done it but there is that small cadre of people who will do it and sue. Either for the power of it or for money. Do not underestimate the depths that fools will goto.
Yeah… if folks are offended by some of the comments in the source code here they really aught to have a look at some of the other popular media from the era to contextualize what was considered acceptable at the time.
It's certainly about a feeling, and I think superiority has more to do with it than 'empathy'. This much is clear with the aggression, bullying and moral grandstanding that's usually behind the language police.
I empathise with myself first, and will use what ever word feels right in the situation. I'd rather speak my mind than please everyone. That's sanity for me and for many others.
Empathising with others and yourself isn't mutually exclusive. What's hard to grasp with that?
> I empathise with myself first and will use what ever word feels right in the situation
And you're doing the same right now. Isn't your use of the word 'selfish' in the thread 'hurtful', and therefore not empathetic to me? By chiding me aren't you empathising with yourself more, and wishing that I would defer to your feelings instead of my own?
The difference between you and I is I don't claim that a virtue is supreme and then immediately enact its opposite, which is really what makes this drive for 'inclusive language' and 'empathy' so repugnant to me.
After I've patiently explained it to you, you really think that you aren't exhibiting the same behaviour? In a much more worse way because it comes in seemly guise?
Legal also may be concerned that having source makes it easier to detect patent infringement and code copying. Even if you deem the risk zero that that actually happened, why run the risk of somebody claiming you did?
For the company there are as good as zero downsides to not doing anything, and a few small upsides and a few low risk, but potentially very costly (in dollars or reputation) if they happen downsides.
That makes not doing anything the default choice for the company.
For (former) employees who worked on this, the upsides are higher; they’ll get some of their work published for the first time. That’s why we see individuals push for this every now and then.
Those niche people are the developers they want to use their software. When that niche is the target audience for whole product line of yours pleasing them is a good idea.
The historical value is invaluable for our species, especially in the far future. There is a moral imperative for this kind of thing to be made available for posterity that, in my opinion, completely overshadows any commercial, copyright or political correctness concerns.
Frankly, there should be regulations guaranteeing source code release after a few decades, and that all code, including third party code, is released from copyright protection. In return, companies should be granted legal protection from any potential legal consequences. It was over 30 years ago. The idea that somebody should be able to sue Microsoft for copying code or a third party can sue them for releasing it or that they should in any way be punished for unsavory language used THIRTY years ago is clearly utter insanity.
Part of me thinks that its not cancellation but more not wanting to personally insult people, by name, in a medium that you never thought anybody but a handful of people might see (and certainly never expected to be published verbatim for the entire world to see) from 35 years ago (maybe people who wrote those comments were a bit less mature)
It also sounds like the code didn't come from inside the house... I wonder how many versions of the raw code for these early OSes actually exist? Start ups are more concerned with survival and not archiving their code. Like how many people at their current company are putting in real effort to maintaining early versions of their existing code bases?
Most startups today probably preserve the vast majority of their code, due to how prolific git is. Companies that don't use monorepos may have a bit of a problem, if your stack is a mess of microservices, some of which you eventually retire, it's easy for that old code to get lost.
Before the popularization of source control, things were different. A lot of people would just edit code Villy-nilly, only keeping very recent backups and the source for major versions, if that. There were no commits and hence no tags, so reproducing the code used to build a specific, minor version might be completely impossible. There were no branches, so ports and patches were often made by copying the code tree, doing some changes, compiling and then forgetting about the whole thing. It was entirely possible for a game studio to give their code over to another team or company, have them do a port and never actually care much for the ported code themselves.
Then there's the problem of external components, most of which were licensed, third-party software, not open source libraries. Even now, they may technically still fall under copyright and be impossible to release.
The binaries for the multi-tasking bits did come from an external source; however, the source code is from our corp source code archives team. Even that was a bit less formal back then...
