If I were to ask Microsoft nicely about open sourcing their code, I'd suggest that they calculate what it will likely cost them (buying rights for externally licensed code, erasing embarrassing comments, trying to find copies of missing code, etc.) and then crowdfund that. It wouldn't so much be a matter of setting up a group in which people would purchase membership as of Microsoft naming a price and setting up a Kickstarter campaign (or similar), and then people giving what they were willing, with there hopefully being enough people willing to give a high enough average amount to meet the named price. But as someone said upthread, finding someone properly placed to advocate for such a thing internally would likely be very helpful in such an effort.
-------- Original message -------- From: Michael C Robinson <mich...@robinson-west.com> Date: 9/26/2019 10:20 (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... I don't have a few million, but a group able to cobble together a few million is more realistic to put together. Question is, how much would membership cost in a group whose goal is to GPL Windows 16 and 32 bit be? Say such a group came into existence and a million people joined for $20/month. The first target, Windows 16 bit land. Then, the 32 bit version of Windows including 9x and ME. Eventually, the group would be able to open source the MS-DOS based versions of Windows completely and membership fees could be reduced or even dropped. Maybe the source code isn't needed, maybe just the interfaces and the design are needed. Quoting Jon Brase <jon.br...@gmail.com>: > If you can cut a check for a few million, Microsoft might sell you > the rights (to the components that they created themselves, of > course, not anything they licensed from others), give you whatever > source code they still have archived, and let you license it to the > public as you choose. > If you can't cut a check, but ask nicely, they have been open > sourcing things that nobody ever thought they'd open source, so > maybe they will eventually open-source Win9x. Frankly, though, I'd > rather concentrate on getting them to just release all their old > Win16 code (Win3, the Win16 components of Win9x, and NTVDM): that's > the part of the PC ecosystem where vintage applications are in most > danger of being lost because nobody has an environment to run them > on anymore: DOS is fairly well covered by DOSBox, FreeDOS, etc, and > Win32 is still an environment that Microsoft maintains, that people > actively write applications for, and that the Wine project is > putting a fair bit of effort into implementing well. Win16, on the > other hand, is somewhat neglected by both MS and Wine, and it would > be good if the old MS source code could be released, or, failing > that, the binaries could at least be put under an open-source > license that explicitly allowed reverse engineering. > > -------- Original message -------- > From: Michael C Robinson <mich...@robinson-west.com> > Date: 9/26/2019 08:35 (GMT-06:00) > To: p...@lists.pdxlinux.org > Cc: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > Subject: [Freedos-user] Source code to Windows 9x and ME... > > 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? > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
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