On 01/03/2013 01:56 PM, Rich Pieri wrote:
On Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:10:27 -0500
Mark Woodward <ma...@mohawksoft.com> wrote:
Well, the DOS version of Windows, windows 1.x through Windows ME,
didn't have TCP until Windows 3.1(1) (as winsock). The 386 enhanced
version, I'm not sure where that was implemented or by whom.
Microsoft. It was code named Wolverine.
The Windows NT/32 bit OS/2 was taken from BSD.
The TCP/IP stack that shipped with NT 3.1 was based on System V
STREAMS, with code licensed from Spider.
The TCP/IP stack that shipped with Windows 95 and Windows/NT 3.5 is an
updated version of Wolverine. It has been part of Windows 9x and /NT up
to the present.
Here's a few excerpts from an article you may or may not be aware of....
"Now, some of Spider's code (possibly all of it) was based on the TCP/IP
stack in the BSD flavors of Unix. These are open source, but distributed
under the BSD license, not the GPL that Linux is released under. Whereas
the GPL states that any software derived from GPL'ed software must also
be released under the GPL, the BSD license basically says, "here's the
source, you can do whatever you want, just give credit to the original
author." "
"I won't even swear on a stack of bibles that the "new" TCP/IP now
shipping in NT/2000/XP and Windows 95/98/Me is completely free of the
old code from Spider. Since I don't work there I don't have access to
the source code. Certainly some parts of TCP (the checksum calculation
comes to mind) are the same everywhere and once someone has written an
optimized version, why rewrite it? And once again, this would be
perfectly legitimate for Microsoft to do under the license. "
Lastly, this interesting (and telling) quote:
"Anyway the FreeBSD programmers who reported all this to the Wall Street
Journal can't see the NT TCP/IP source either, so they can't have been
referring to that. "
This is *exactly* why BSD license is bad. Microsoft didn't copy the BSD
stack, Spider did. The intellectual property rights in this case is a
mess. Certainly there have been code drift from initial port, but the
BSD license, allowing corporations to hide code that other people wrote,
will keep this debate from being settled. I argue that it is more BSD
than not, and you argue that it is not based on BSD. I wish we could
look at the code to settle the argument. Oh! wait, we can't because the
BSD license lets microsoft hide the code that doesn't belong to it.
The OS/2 TCP/IP stack was written by IBM based on the BSD stack. It
might actually be the BSD stack ported to OS/2 but I'm not sure about
that.
Have any more misconceptions that you need clarified? I got plenty of
time to poke holes in your proclamations.
Thanks, but, I have worked closely with Microsoft since the early DOS
and OS/2 1.x days. I've had many business trips to Redmond while working
on system level components from Windows 2.x, 3.x NT, OS/2 1.x and
Portable OS/2 which became Windows NT. I Saw the OS/2 presentation
manager running on the NT kernel before it was known as the NT kernel.
I've published a couple articles on Windows (NT and DOS) device driver
development and contributed a couple chapters to "Windows of the 3.1
Masters." I consulted with Sun for Java on Windows NT for medical
applications, Dragon naturally Speaking for performance on NT, when
Keithley Metrabyte was writing their own drivers, I designed the Windows
(95/NT) portable infrastructure. I was also the architect of the Windows
implementation of Microsoft's original "Microsoft Home" "Creative
Writer" and "Fine Artist" products while at Turning Point. I think I
have it covered. I work on Linux, because I prefer Linux. That does not
imply that I do not know Windows.
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