Quoting Ralf Quint <freedos...@gmail.com>:
On 9/26/2019 6:35 AM, Michael C Robinson wrote:
Is it possible to get the source code to Windows 9x and ME since
Microsoft isn't supporting it anymore?
No.
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?
Sounds rather idealistic and void of any facts. Microsoft has not
interest to open source ANY part of ANY windows. Even Windows 1.x
and 2.x, which are on GitHub now, are still copyrighted. So it all
comes down to "you can look but you can't touch", which as far as
FreeDOS is concerned (for which any Windows source code be
irrelevant to begin with) would be of no interest...
Ralf
Freedos should be capable of supporting Windows 3.1, at least in
standard mode.
Wouldn't it be great if freedos could support that better and 3.11 as well
along with a lot of programs from that era? Maybe source code won't help, but
the interfaces and other engineering information could be quite useful for
someone trying to support programs designed for Windows 16 bit. That said,
Win32 based programs are of interest to anyone who needs to run them in a
dos based environment. There is a lot of industrial software that depends
on a combination of MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 98 SE. You say who cares, but
let's look at this a little closer for a moment. One of freedos's selling
points is running old dos based systems. If you can run these systems on
an open source supported OS, that is better than running on MS-DOS from an a
bandonware site. There is also the potential that freedos can run this old
software on newer hardware that isn't 20+ years old. The biggest problem
with 98se/ME is that there aren't drivers for hardware that is newer than
the Pentium II pretty much. Windows ME is pretty much the same story.
Getting an industrial PII on a single board for a PICMG 1.3 backplane or an
ISA backplane, that is probably the best bet for the pick and place machine
we want to get up and running. The machine is worth $20k-$30k. Yes we
could pull the two heads and try a set of heads based on Windows 7, but
that is nearing EOL already. Worse than that, the cost of Windows 7 heads
is nearly half of what the machine is worth. I'd say that my brother's
machine is worth at least $15k right now.
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