From their recent behavior, I think it's quite likely that there is at least a faction within the company that thinks the hassle is worth it, and that is quite possibly the settled internal doctrine of the company. From what I've heard about Microsoft's revenue from Windows, they are mostly making money off of enterprise support contracts, much like Red Hat does with THE (though unlike Red Hat, I think that they arrived in that position more or less accidentally), so given the bad reputation they acquired in their early years, I think they're finding it advantageous to move towards an open-source business model to shore up their reputation. That doesn't mean they're going to just up and open source all the things tomorrow, of course, but I think in the future we can expect to see more releases of old code, and I think it's quite likely that at some point in the medium term they may very well do one or more of the following: 1) Open source the NT kernel2) Open source their Win32 implementation3) Transition Windows to using the Linux kernel by one of the following methods (compare the way that Novell transitioned away from the Netware kernel):3a) Making significant donations of code to the Wine project, then announcing a version of Windows with the option to either use NT/WSL or Linux/Wine to provide a combined Win32/Unix API.3b) Developing a proprietary implementation of Win32 that runs on top of Linux and announcing a version of Windows that presents the option to either use NT/WSL or Linux/"LSW". Before you laugh too hard at option 3, bear in mind that MS is really the only holdout in the industry using their own kernel API rather than a Unix implementation. Every other OS in common use, even if its middleware is proprietary (MacOS, Android/Google Play), uses some sort of *nix kernel. Furthermore, Win32 was designed with portability across radically different kernels in mind (DOS vs NT), so the transition to running on top of Linux would not be an especially difficult one (and has already been implemented in Wine) . So even if MS's overtures toward open source are just fig leaves for PR rather than an actual change in philosophy, I think the chance of a transition to an open *nix kernel is fairly significant. In 10 or 15 years, it may well be that the standard application environment will be Win32/Linux rather than Win32/NT or Gnu/X/Linux.
-------- Original message -------- From: R Moog <moog...@gmail.com> Date: 9/26/2019 09:23 (GMT-06:00) To: "Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS." <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Source code to Windows 9x and ME... There is another way but it's still a hassle for MS. Ask them nicely. If they decide to follow up on the request then the ball is in their court to make it happen. czw., 26 wrz 2019, 16:15 użytkownik R Moog <moog...@gmail.com> napisał: Rather* grim. I hate autocorrect. czw., 26 wrz 2019, 16:15 użytkownik R Moog <moog...@gmail.com> napisał: I agree but here's a reality check. The outlook is father grim and we won't live until the copyright expires. From copyright.gov, works created after 1978 have their copyright expired 70 years after the death of its author. In case of Windows ME, we're looking at all the devs croaking, Microsoft dissolving and then 70 years of waiting unless we're in for a near future apocalypse scenario. Amiga scene pretty much showcases the nightmarish hellscape of copyright law. There is always someone somewhere out there that owns a piece of the whole thing and will sue for lulz. czw., 26 wrz 2019, 16:04 użytkownik Michael C Robinson <mich...@robinson-west.com> napisał: Quoting andrew fabbro <and...@fabbro.org>: > On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 6:36 AM Michael C Robinson < > mich...@robinson-west.com> wrote: > >> Is it possible to get the source code to Windows 9x and ME since >> Microsoft isn't supporting it anymore? >> One would want to get the source code and then open source it of >> course. Even Windows 3.1 and Windows 3.11 is closed source. Surely, >> Microsoft could release pre 9x Windows? It wouldn't hurt Microsoft at >> all since Windows >> is squarely NT based now where many modern systems won't even support >> DOS let alone DOS based Windows. I realize it would probably be very >> expensive to get Microsoft to cough up the source code, but has anyone >> even looked into this? >> > > "It wouldn't hurt Microsoft" is not exactly a true statement. > > Major reasons MSFT won't be releasing source code like that: > > (1) Some components are still in use. Microsoft does not rewrite their OS > from scratch with each new version and while Windows 10 is very different > than Windows Me, it's still an x86 OS. > > (2) There may be pieces they licensed or are under others' copyrights. > Sorting that out is non-trivial. This is true especially of things like > drivers. > > (3) Source code often reveals the inner workings of companies and > products. It's not unusual to see things like "we put this in because our > other product has a bug and we have to compensate" and comments like that. > Not to mention profanity :-) > > (4) Many times old source code hides other embarrassing (or > semi-embarrassing) secrets. There was a leak of Windows 2000 many years > ago and I read that it had comments such as "(some app) breaks here so we > put in this workaround to maintain compatibility with previous versions". > This would inevitably lead to all kinds of press about favoring different > vendors, etc. > > (5) And the big one...where's the money in releasing old source code? It > takes lawyers, tech people, etc. and likely would cost a fair amount of > money just to package it up. > > BTW, Microsoft has (or at least at one time had) various programs where > universities had access to the source code, but that was under NDA. > > -- > andrew fabbro > and...@fabbro.org ReactOS won't replace Windows 9x/ME because it is not dos based. Originally the target was 9x, but they gave up on that :-( For stuff that isn't supported anymore but should be, surely all the players could come together and release source code. Frankly, I think it should be the law that you have to release source code if you stop supporting a popular OS. Aren't some of the licenses pushing 20 years now? _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
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