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posted by
LaminatorX
on Wednesday March 26 2014, @03:04AM
from the 640k-ought-to-be-enough-for-anybody dept.
from the 640k-ought-to-be-enough-for-anybody dept.
Lagg and Uncle_Al both wrote in about this surprising source release.
Lagg writes:
Today a technet article was posted by a Microsoft employee announcing that they are releasing to the Computer History Museum and the public at large the source code to v1.1 and 2.0 of MS-DOS as well as v1.1a of Word. All obvious jokes aside this could be good for projects such as DOSBox. Note also that said employee considers 300kb to be small for source code. Seems rather large to me, even now. But in any case this will be an interesting thing to dig into. To save the trouble of link chasing here are the relevant links:
Computer history article for MS-DOS (direct link to source)
Computer history article for Word (direct link to source)
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Microsoft Releases MSDOS 2 and WFW 1 Sources
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jamesbond on Wednesday March 26 2014, @03:52AM
Sorry, no. In fact it is a big NO with emphasised capital letters.
The "DOS" component of DOSBox is essentially a reverse-engineering project; DOSBox contributors who look at the MS-DOS source will "taint" the project with the knowledge - Microsoft could claim that contributions from them could have been taken from said MS-DOS source (and all the consequence that follows).
Same comment for people who (is or will be) contributing to FreeDOS, ReactOS (for the MS-DOS source), and Libreoffice, OpenOffice, Abiword, Kword, etc (for the MS-Word source).
In fact, ReactOS spent about a year doing code http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Audit [reactos.org] and removing code from suspected contributions.
So yes, the code release is good for historical reasons; but if you work or contribute or plan to contribute to any of similar FOSS software; do yourself a favour and don't look at them.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 26 2014, @05:55AM
If Microsoft releases it with a compatible license, the code can certainly be used.
Now, of course Microsoft being Microsoft, I don't expect them to do it. But technically they could.
But then, even if the code is not licensed that way, there's still a way to profit from the original source being available; it just needs two separate persons or teams with clear communication boundaries: One party is allowed to look at the MS DOS source code, but not to modify the DosBOX source code, or disseminate any information about the MS DOS source code to the DosBOX developers. What they *may* disclose however is any high-level information like "there is an undocumented DOS function with number xy, which expects the address of a file descriptor in ax and a length in bx, and which overwrites the first bx bytes of the file with 0". The second party, who can write code for DosBOX but cannot look at the MS DOS code, can then use that information to provide an independent implementation of that functionality in case some program uses it. Since they don't have access to the MS DOS source code, they can't infringe on that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 26 2014, @03:00PM
This could be a very worthwhile community project: gather some volunteers who don't expect ever to write similar code, but who can understand what they're reading. They should produce header files that document all private and public methods in the code, with short comments that explain the input and output of each. There's an achievable, measurable goal (produce header files documenting all methods), and assigning multiple people to do the same files or check each other's work can provide verification of results.
From those header files, the DOSBox and ReactOS and other project teams can work to produce conforming code that implements (and extends?) those functions.
This seriously needs to happen in an organized, responsible way. If I were running publicity for MS, I'd set up the project management for this just to win some hearts-and-minds; they have the PM resources and experience to make this happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 26 2014, @07:43PM
[description of a Chinese wall]
Pffff. There's already a gratis and libre alternative that's better.
http://www.freedos.org/ [freedos.org]
Supports FAT32 and USB.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3) by Lagg on Wednesday March 26 2014, @11:21AM
http://lagg.me [lagg.me]
9467 6082 8A35 2E1E 2D6B 76C4 5E9A ED56 076F 9E89
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday March 26 2014, @10:18PM
For those not aware, the MSDOS5 source was leaked a long time ago.