- cross-posted to:
- opensource@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- opensource@lemmy.ml
wasn’t it leaked already
Probably yeah, but now they’ve officially released it under the MIT license so stuff like Wine could now potentially borrow some code to improve compatibility with Windows
At thought occurred to me but is code this old even still relevant at all?
I ask this as someone who writes simple scripts and would never call themselves a coder.
For the most part probably not, but Microsoft cares a lot about backwards compatibility so I imagine some of this code still lives on in Windows
Though you should take this with a grain of salt, since I’m saying this as someone who 1. never looked at Wine source code 2. used the Windows API only once, for a very small program 3. is still learning programming, so I wouldn’t call myself a coder (yet) either
As someone with an IBM PS/1 running 4.0, I’m excited to be able to modify it, distribute it, etc
yeah there are even still some remaining windows 3.0 dialogues used in the latest win11
Ah, the Quick and Dirty Operating System… we meet again.
FreeDos is better anyways
I wonder if this is of any use to them or if they’re already too far ahead.
Good question lmk if you find the answer. I just use FreeDos to play Chex quest
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.
They couldn’t use it. MS DOS is released under a licence that restricts redistribution
It says here you can modify and distribute: https://github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/main/LICENSE
They changed it to MIT. You can basically do what you want with it.
Sure, but it’s still really interesting from a historic point of view.
What’s the use case that would upset Microsoft the most?
Idk, maybe fork it under the name MS-DOSNT
😆👏👍
Use it to program an functional DOS emulator for MacOS 8?
Ignore them. Send a pull request with the full source of Arch Linux.
is archived
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that makes it explicit:The source files in this repo are for historical reference and will be kept static, so please don’t send Pull Requests suggesting any modifications to the source files […]
Somebody fork it then?
Time to fork!
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?
Cheers! It looks like this is then the PKGBUILD
https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/base/-/blob/main/PKGBUILD?ref_type=heads
In which case, there are no packages defined there which are Arch specific except pacman. So… pacman is the Arch source, right?
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.
ah, thanks for the clarification!
Nah, just a giant compiled binary blob. That’s what all the cool hackers do these days.
I’ll try a supply chain attack! That’s a good trick!
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.
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 :)
I still use bat h files and the system scheduler to automate a shocking amount of my job.
They were important to boot games that needed most of your limited memory.
Or to play the demo made by the warez group that cracked it before launching the game.
640k should be enough for anybody
tell that my mouse driver, the soundblaster driver and the cdrom driver fighting over every single byte of that precious ram 😩
Bill Gates denied saying this, by the way.
Please use punctuation.
punctuation is a scam created by the shadow government
yeah punctuations is silly who cares
It isn’t. There’s a reason for it.
Typicalcommingfromashillforbigwhitespace!
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…
Do you ever list your job title as Batman?
No, because the IRS wants to tax Batman
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.
Tra-la-la!
50% hero. 100% cotton.
Next step, bind them to unused keys on your keyboard and press them in the right order
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?
I suggest Autohotkey ;)
op’s job is now turning on the computer and setting off ahk.
Just set up a drinking bird to set off AHK.
op’s job is now overseeing a drinking bird
Wow a promotion; fancy!
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.
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
This guy is a master bat-er
Or just use the
@CALL
command to call them in order without having to guesstimate how long they run.
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.
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
I guess we now have a timeframe in which to expect the release of Windows.
30+ years after death. Better than 70+ years of copyright 🤷
Would this have Bill’s code in it ? Or was he off the shop floor by then ??
His last product was the OS for the Tandy model 100 in 1983.
Did Gates write any code? Wasn’t he the marketing guy?
You’re thinking of Shit Jobs, the FruitCo charlatan. Gates’ pancake sort algorithm held the speed record for 30 years.
I’d be surprised if Windows 11 didn’t still have bill’s code in it
I’d be surprised if Bill had written anything substantial in decades tbh.
Both of these comments are probably true.
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.
Ever hear of Windows NT? Legacy DOS code was relegated to userspace long ago. And NT was designed by Dave Cutler, the guy who designed VMS and RSX-11. Most certainly not “shit piled on top of shit.” Unix could have learned a thing or two from Dave but by then it was too late; the plane had very much taken off.
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.
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.
Wake me when they release DOS 6.x source code.
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?
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.
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.
Looking forward to the “when I wrote this code, only god and I knew how it works. Now only god knows” comments.
Woah MIT license. That’s a lot more permissive than I expected.
MS-DOS 1.25, 2.0 were release years ago, your title should specify 4.0
That page is full of pop-ups.
Your browser is not full of adblockers
It’s the built-in browser for sync for Lemmy on android
Thanks, I was looking exactly for thst !
It will be great to know exactly what happens when you make the function calls.
I have been very curious to know how they wrote the InStr VB6 function. I hope it’s somewhere in there !