, Two things here: First, I've heard rumors (possibly true, possibly just people trying to make MS look incompetent) that MS actually lost the source code to some unspecified legacy version of Windows at some point (has to be legacy because if it had been a then-current main product line it probably would have killed them).
So if they lost the entire DOS-kernel Windows source tree sometime after the release of XP, the reason they're not releasing sources for Win 3.x/9x may be that said sources no longer exist. Second, assuming they still have the sources, perhaps we can make it worth their while: basically, propose that they name a price and start a crowdfunding campaign. If the campaign meets the price they name, they release the code. Even if they did lose the code, getting a friendly license applied to the binaries and to stuff like the example code in the DDKs would be massively helpful: the binaries are definitely floating around, and being able to write compatibility drivers for FreeDOS/DOSBox/etc. would be quite helpful. We'd just need to find someone in the retrocomputing or FOSS community with the right connections and personality to pitch it to MS, and then we'd need the right sort of campaign to get people to pitch in (establishing a precedent of proprietary projects crowdfunding themselves to an open source release would be a huge win, we'd just need to convince people of that). Dec 25, 2021 16:35:41 Liam Proven <lpro...@gmail.com>: > > > Today, the entire DOS and Windows 3/9x codebase is basically entirely > obsolete and the company does not sell any products based on it. It > *could* release everything prior to the Windows NT line with no > substantial impact on any current product. > > However, this would cost it money. The code is probably a mess, and it > contains material from third parties which would have to be removed. A > large cleanup operation would be needed, which would take dozens of > people maybe years of work, and MS stands to gain nothing from it. > > However, it would help FreeDOS, and WINE, and ReactOS, and several > other FOSS projects, which MS management almost certainly does not > want to do. > > So, given it would benefit others but not the company, *and* it would > cost them serious money, I doubt it will happen. _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
