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?
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