JustMarkov, Cool, but why’s that all of a sudden?
SpaceNoodle, They found a new 0-day exploit
GolfNovemberUniform, Probably Microsoft is trying to “save” some of its reputation after adding ads to Windows 11 one more time
catloaf, They probably only got clearance from their lawyers (or IBM’s lawyers) just now.
A lot of proprietary software includes bits from other proprietary software that they don’t have the rights to open-source. And untangling and removing those bits takes time and effort.
herrcaptain, I love that they specify that they’re not accepting pull requests.
QuazarOmega, Even funnier when it’s their own platform and it has been missing the feature to disable them for so long afaik
pennomi, Woah MIT license. That’s a lot more permissive than I expected.
henfredemars, The MS-DOS v1.25 and v2.0 files were originally shared at the Computer History Museum on March 25th, 2014 and are being (re)published in this repo to make them easier to find[.]
laughterlaughter, Oh.
zarenki, In 2014, MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 were released under a Microsoft shared-source license (Microsoft Research License) which forbids redistribution
In 2018, both versions were published to GitHub and relicensed as MIT, making them properly open-source
Today, MS-DOS 4.00 was added to that repo, also under MIT.
blindbunny, FreeDos is better anyways
bjoern_tantau, I wonder if this is of any use to them or if they’re already too far ahead.
schnurrito, To my knowledge, FreeDOS has been a fairly complete implementation of DOS for a very long time, so this is probably not useful to them.
blindbunny, Good question lmk if you find the answer. I just use FreeDos to play Chex quest
psud, They couldn’t use it. MS DOS is released under a licence that restricts redistribution
bjoern_tantau, Esperanto They changed it to MIT. You can basically do what you want with it.
psud, Neat!
explodicle, It says here you can modify and distribute: github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/main/LICENSE
space, Sure, but it’s still really interesting from a historic point of view.
moon, What’s the use case that would upset Microsoft the most?
Samsy, Idk, maybe fork it under the name MS-DOSNT
Murdoc, 😆👏👍
Godort, Use it to program an functional DOS emulator for MacOS 8?
marx2k, 6.22 or foff
fubarx, Ignore them. Send a pull request with the full source of Arch Linux.
deadbeef79000, Nah, just a giant compiled binary blob. That’s what all the cool hackers do these days.
gravitas_deficiency, I’ll try a supply chain attack! That’s a good trick!
tetris11, dumb question maybe, but where is the full source of arch Linux? My understanding is that its just vanilla Linux that uses the pacman package manager.
Am I wrong in saying the pacman is the Arch source? Or is there more going on in the tar ball?
Aatube,
tetris11, Cheers! It looks like this is then the PKGBUILD
gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/…/PKGBUILD?ref_typ…
In which case, there are no packages defined there which are Arch specific except pacman. So… pacman is the Arch source, right?
Aatube, A lot of these packages have Arch-specific modifications. For example, filesystem doesn't even have a non-Arch upstream as it defines the filesystem layout. That PKGBUILD and everything it depends on is the Arch source. Distributions are defined by which packages they include.
tetris11, ah, thanks for the clarification!
Aatube, is archived
ylai, There is even a sentence in
README.md
that makes it explicit:The source files in this repo are for historical reference and will be kept static, so please don’t send Pull Requests suggesting any modifications to the source files […]
captain_aggravated, Somebody fork it then?
laughterlaughter, Time to fork!
SuperNerd, So cool, thanks. As a kid I spent so much time in DEBUG, stepping through DOS’s executables, and especially the Interrupt handlers. It’s so neat to see the actual source code-- way easier to read and follow. I didn’t know it was all written in assembly, from within Debug it sometimes seemed so messy and convoluted that I just assumed more was written in C.
Murdoc, (edited ) So not 3? Why not, because it was the most successful or something? 🤷
Plus I never even heard of 4 before. I’m going to have to look that up.
Bah, I was thinking of windows. I need to get some sleep.
davidgro, (edited ) As far as Windows goes, 95 was actually version 4.00.950 for the first version.
98 was 4.1, 2000 was 5.0, XP 5.1, Vista 6.0, 7 was 6.1, 8 was 6.2, 8.1 = 6.3
Then they jumped to 10 in both the name and internal version.
Windows 11 is still 10.0.x though.
TrickDacy, Did they use source control of any kind back then?
Lowpast, (edited ) Soke vrsions of DOS used a VCS named Source Library Manager, SLM, aka Slime. Later, it became Microsoft Delta, and eventually SourceSafe, then they switched to SourceDepot, which was a flavor of Perforce.
TrickDacy, Wow ok, thanks!
cupcakezealot, i remember writing .bat files and pretending they were really fancy update scripts when i was like ten they did nothing but it was still fun :)
KISSmyOSFeddit, They were important to boot games that needed most of your limited memory.
doublejay1999, 640k should be enough for anybody
laughterlaughter, Bill Gates denied saying this, by the way.
a_wild_mimic_appears, tell that my mouse driver, the soundblaster driver and the cdrom driver fighting over every single byte of that precious ram 😩
Klear, Or to play the demo made by the warez group that cracked it before launching the game.
ArmoredThirteen, Like half of my job is writing .bat files to automate stuff locally and not tell my boss that all I do anymore is double click the right things in the right order…
SpaceCadet,
SnipingNinja, Next step, bind them to unused keys on your keyboard and press them in the right order
targetx, I’d recommend scheduled tasks instead. Why be involved at all? :-)
ebits21, I suggest Autohotkey ;)
umbrella, op’s job is now turning on the computer and setting off ahk.
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot, Just set up a drinking bird to set off AHK.
umbrella, op’s job is now overseeing a drinking bird
shield_gengar, Wow a promotion; fancy!
a_wild_mimic_appears, i propose to create a menu in which you can define what batchfiles to run in what order. its been a while since i worked with batch files, but if memory serves right, that should be doable, no?
psud, Yes. You could make menus and capture keystrokes in batch files
My autoexec.bat back in windows 3 asked if you wanted windows or a command line (most games didn’t like the memory overhead of being loaded from windows)
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot, Do you ever list your job title as Batman?
cupcakezealot, only if they keep the it room as dark as possible and whenever someone walks in for help they jump up onto the desk with a flashlight and yell "I’M BATMAN’ while wearing a cape and underpants.
ArmoredThirteen, Well I work from home so I do keep my room dark, I like to have a blanket over my shoulders, it’s not uncommon for me to just be in my underwear… Honestly I’m most of the way there
nycki, Tra-la-la!
caseyweederman, 50% hero. 100% cotton.
KingThrillgore, No, because the IRS wants to tax Batman
viking, You can put in a timeout command at the end, and then call the next .bat file.
For example “TIMEOUT /T 60” waits for 60 seconds before resuming, or you can override it by pressing any key.
So if you know how long the wait time between scripts is, just write a master.bat and call them in order, with adequate waiting time in between.
SpaceCadet, Or just use the
@CALL
command to call them in order without having to guesstimate how long they run.
Tja, This guy is a master bat-er
ArmoredThirteen, Okay so the dumb part is a lot of this is me abstracting away our complex build system. I’ve basically bubble-gummed a dedicated build system in top of it for only the tasks I do. At a certain point if I start adding configurations or timing I might as well just wrap it in gradle or something. But the system that I’m calling is already their attempt at simplifying another build system that’s underneath it that was written by the old guard using arcane sorcery. The whole thing is a mess
CatTrickery, I had a job like that and powershell was a godsend. I let it slip when I accidentally set the multiplier for the delay randomiser too low and it did a months work in a morning. I ended up writing a guide for the others there when I left but sadly everyone but me had computers that supported newer versions of Windows where the scripts ended up broken. They asked me to come back and update it the Monday after I left. I asked if they would pay me to do it. They said no. Then I said no.
ArmoredThirteen, This is part of why I still have manual kickoffs for mine. Never need to worry about work getting done while I’m away or getting done suspiciously fast. Also they should have paid you lol, the dingdongs. Would cost a lot more just in work lost having someone else spend time deciphering and fixing it. They could always get someone else up to speed with the system after it is fixed by you so there’s little or no down time
laughterlaughter, Please use punctuation.
cupcakezealot, punctuation is a scam created by the shadow government
billgamesh, yeah punctuations is silly who cares
Eldritch, Typicalcommingfromashillforbigwhitespace!
laughterlaughter, It isn’t. There’s a reason for it.
chiliedogg, I still use bat h files and the system scheduler to automate a shocking amount of my job.
bjoern_tantau, I guess we now have a timeframe in which to expect the release of Windows.
onlinepersona, 30+ years after death. Better than 70+ years of copyright 🤷
doublejay1999, Would this have Bill’s code in it ? Or was he off the shop floor by then ??
ceasarlegsvin, I'd be surprised if Windows 11 didn't still have bill's code in it
nomous, I’d be surprised if Bill had written anything substantial in decades tbh.
princessnorah, Both of these comments are probably true.
ForgotAboutDre, Windows is just shit piled on top of shit and sold as something new. It’s so bloated so they can maintain backwards compatibility. So original code is definitely in Windows 11.
Outtatime, 😂 that would be funny. However, windows stopped using DOS as a boot mechanism around the XP era As far as I’m aware anyways
MonkderDritte, Did Gates write any code? Wasn’t he the marketing guy?
DogWater, Is this useful for hobbyists besides poking around and seeking the design philosophy at work back then?
Like would there be any advantage or reason to implement this in a home project? For example maybe that it’s lightweight and has some rare compatibility or anything like that?
vext01, I think its interesting from a historical perspective.
I imagine people will examine the code, find easter eggs, bugs, unknown features, amusing comments etc.
I look forward to seeing what is found.
Potatos_are_not_friends, Looking forward to the “when I wrote this code, only god and I knew how it works. Now only god knows” comments.
bigredcar, There are a lot of decades old embedded systems out there. Every so often you hear about a big company still relying on floppy disks and other old tech, including major railways and airplane companies. Having the source code will help with debugging better than having to disassemble or other reverse engineering.
DogWater, ATC is a famous one of those lol
MonkderDritte, Maybe as a reference, if you want to build another abomination?
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