Microsoft Open Sources Another Operating System

[@unfa00]

MS-DDoS?

[@BobDoe_69]

well played

[@sunnyheheheh9401]

LoL

[@skvader4187]

Hey, you're the freesound guy.

[@jonmichaelgalindo]

IT at government agencies across the US just celebrated like, "We can finally dig deeper into the hardware stack we're running!"

[@IngwiePhoenix]

...hadn't even thought of that! XD

[@antonliakhovitch8306]

To be fair, US government agencies can get the source code if they want it anyway. MS actually gives them access to *Windows* source code, too.

[@subrezon]

They don't open source anything newer because of Compatibility Modes. They 100% still contain code from all the way back to 95, and are likely extremely hard to patch if a vulnerability was ever discovered, because a security fix would likely break the already shaky compatibility. As long as compatibility modes exist, don't expect a single line of code from 95 onwards to be open source, ever. It's "security by obscurity", sure, but I understand the reasons.

[@capn]

The real problem with that picture is relying on software from 1995 to perform security-sensitive tasks today.

[@luis449bp]

Windows XP and below was leaked years ago. So vulnerabilities are being patched.

[@siliconhawk]

ms really should consider a sort of rolling release windows of sorts that will 100 % break comparability but it will be much much better of an OS for modern hardware. more than half the people will migrate in a heartbeat coz the most they use their computer for is a web browser and once the cat is out of the hat. the tools and developers will port their application for the new system sooner rather than later

[@stefanalecu9532]

​@@siliconhawk they ARE pretty much doing a rolling release since Windows 10 and 11, you're their beta tester and guinea pig each Patch Tuesday

[@user-xr3rb6pn9m]

​@siliconhawk9293 backwards compatibility is their main selling point, especially in the enterprise space. Neither on Mac nor on Linux can you run an unmodified binary from 20+ years ago, but on Windows you can.

[@JessicaFEREM]

remember that windows calculator is FOSS

[@no_name4796]

100% FOSS, no strings attached? (Unlike vscode which seems foss, but it's actually it's very closed in many things)

[@LovecraftianGodsKiller]

@@no_name4796 Luckily VSCodium exists to help eleviate a lot of the microsoft BS and stress

[@twei__]

​@@no_name4796 nah the squareroot function is still closed source

[@sneinhz]

i think terminal is too?

[@AdamDaviesSussex]

​@@no_name4796 VSCodium is better

[@finkelmana]

If I remember correctly, the founder of FreeDOS says Microsoft employees actively contribute the project. I think this is MS's way of giving what they can without violating licenses and contracts.

[@horusfalcon]

That sounds about right.

[@rizkyadiyanto7922]

how? i thought in WINE case ex-ms employees cant contribute to the project.

[@0015v]

​@@rizkyadiyanto7922 probably contributes under pseudonyms, for the sake of them not violating their Non Disclosure Agreements with Microsoft

[@tcscomment]

​@@rizkyadiyanto7922 Wine contributors can't contribute to ReactOS and vice versa

[@kreuner11]

​​@@0015vno they don't, real DOS code is too old and does not match the freedos coding paradigm anyway. This is likely new code with the knowledge of how to make it compatible

[@foznoth]

I was 17 in 1988, still messing around with a Commodore Amiga & an Acorn Archimedes. My first Microsoft experience was with MSDOS 5 in 1990, and my first IT job.

[@BryanChance]

I was 17 in 1998. I think retro computing is way more interesting.

[@megan_alnico]

The problem with open sourcing Windows 9x is that it would show how guilty they were of arbitrary bundling Windows and DOS. Remember Gates said "find me anything, find me a bug" because he didn't want Windows running on any other DOS besides MS DOS

[@ffwast]

They FAKED a bug.

[@squirlmy]

Look up "AARD code" Quite a while ago, Caldera Inc. accused MS of having modified Windows 3.1 so that it would not run on DR DOS 6.0 although there was no technical reason for it not to work. Several industry experts revealed that Microsoft put encrypted code, which became known as AARD code, in five otherwise unrelated Microsoft programs in order to prevent the functioning of DR DOS in pre-releases (beta versions) of Windows 3.1, The code would display messages like: Non-Fatal error detected: error #2726 Please contact Windows 3.1 beta support It was also possible to run Windows 4 on DR-DOS 7 after bypassing some new and non-essential interface code through WinGlue. In 2000, Microsoft settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, which in 2009 was revealed to be $280 million.

[@eDoc2020]

Win9x, in its normal mode of operation, accesses the internal state of DOS directly. This probably won't work too well if you use a different DOS. It is possible to run without this functionality but this makes the system freeze whenever you perform disk accesses.

[@bastiensante1902]

@@ffwast AARD moment

[@No-mq5lw]

Realistically, those source disks should be preserved as flux images so essentially everything about them are preserved, in addition to being "archived" as a bunch of text or whatever. Flux formats preserve every single little detail about a floppy disk, so anomalies in formatting or whatever get preserved too.

[@eDoc2020]

Who says they were source disks? Microsoft used their own source control system (Source Library Manager) so it would be stored centrally.

[@4X6GP]

I was 46 in 1988. The first version of DOS I used was probably 2.0. I recall thinking that it was far inferior to Sinclair's QDOS (that's Tony Tebby's QDOS, not Patterson's).

[@dingokidneys]

I think you win for being the old guy in this comment section. I was only 27 in 1988 and never had seen QDOS. I got to play with an HP3000 in high school in 1978 on which I tried to write a simple game, then got to play with an Apple II running Visicalc in Uni as well as another Unix system (don't know what) for "Programming" in Basic on an honest-to-god teletype. Didn't get my hands on another computer until I was working and got to build analytics spreadsheets on a Fujitsu mainframe. Then a PC turned up at work with an 80286 CPU and a colour display. The boss was amazed that I could make it draw pie charts. He thought we were really at the cutting edge of technology in 1987.

[@dansanger5340]

Microsoft also open-sourced the .NET Micro Framework a while back, which is sort of an operating system for tiny devices.

[@TetrisMaster512]

ThreadX as well, used to be under a source-available license, but got released under the MIT license recently.

[@d3stinYwOw]

It's dead.

[@tlhIngan]

It's likely the other versions of DOS are encumbered. MS-DOS 5 was encumbered by a lawsuit by DRI (Digital Research) because of various Windows 3.x checks for DOS. MS-DOS 6 had issues with DoubleSpace disk compression software (Stacker Inc), which lead to 6.1 and 6.20, but 6.21 removed it, and 6.22 (final version) adding in DriveSpace. There's also a lot of 3rd party source code in MS-DOS 5 and 6 - I believe ScanDisk and Defrag came from Symantec as lightweight versions from Norton Utilities. MS-DOS 6 had disk compression code. Likely that's what's keeping DOS 5 and 6 from being released - making sure the lawsuits allow it, and either getting permission from Symantec to release it or scrubbing from the code.

[@arthurmoore9488]

Even excluding that, legal has to do research to find every instance of that. So, every version takes a long time because they have to look up licenses for something 30+ years old.

[@stevethepocket]

Unless the DRI suit proved that Microsoft had outright stolen source files or executables from them, that shouldn't be a factor. Any patents that old would be long since expired by now.

[@therealnotanerd_account2]

@@stevethepocket if I remember correctly DRI complaints were related to the fact that Windows 3.1 would show a message error when running on DR-DOS, but it would work fine. That scared users, thinking DR-DOS was incompatble with Windows.

[@RadikAlice]

This oddly reminds me of Doom. Source code was released due to John Carmack's insistence But it wasn't the DOS version as planned, but someone's Linux port because the DOS one used a proprietary audio API. Wish I remembered his name with ease, but I do know. He's listed on the Ultimate Doom credits, very well deserved

[@squirlmy]

Caldera bought DR-DOS by the time MS settled. I think Novell also owned DR-DOS for a little while. In 2000, Microsoft settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, which in 2009 was revealed to be $280 million. Look up "AARD code". accused MS of having modified Windows 3.1 so that it would not run on DR DOS 6.0 although there was no technical reason for it not to work. Several industry experts revealed that Microsoft put encrypted code, which became known as AARD code, in five otherwise unrelated Microsoft programs in order to prevent the functioning of DR DOS in pre-releases (beta versions) of Windows 3.1, The code would also display messages like: Non-Fatal error detected: error #2726 Please contact Windows 3.1 beta support Press ENTER to exit or C to continue

[@UKprl]

@ 4:30 Windows 2000 crying in the corner "Hey your forgot about all my editions"

[@UKprl]

… until the outro

[@anderskirchenbauer3723]

Windows 2000 was NT 5 until it was renamed just before release. The original ATI Radeon didn't have drivers for it for years because ATI didn't consider it a consumer OS.

[@idk-sy3iu]

Windows 2000 is an NT windows

[@abdera7mane]

Brodie's age reveal was insane

[@MyAmazingUsername]

Yes, many of his viewers will be relieved to hear that he is legal age to marry.

[@joemann7971]

​@@MyAmazingUsernameI'd say he's even old enough to drink but that might be a stretch.

[@TrowGundam]

My first computer (it was ancient even at the time we got it), predated DOS. It was an old IBM running actual DOS. My Grandmother, who we lived with at the time, worked as an accountant and they were getting rid of old computers, so she took it. Didn't even have a harddrive, had to boot off a 5.25" Floppy. Then from there we got a machine that ran Windows 3.1 for a while.

[@kyle8952]

"My first computer (it was ancient even at the time we got it), predated DOS. It was an old IBM running actual DOS. " Pardon?

[@CYT_yoyosikou]

​@@kyle8952 Maybe he means 86-DOS?

[@paultapping9510]

​@kyle8952 As opposed to ms-dos presumably

[@Mankepanke]

I have a laptop that predates NixOS 23, but it now runs NixOS 23. Makes sense?

[@squirlmy]

@@paultapping9510 IBM called their version PC-DOS, and guarded that brand name for a while, even as they tried to introduce OS/2 to compete with Windows. All non-IBM "DOS" was called MS-DOS, and in the beginning they were all incompatible. Compaq was the original maker to make their version 95+% compatible, and could run all exact software bought for PC-DOS. If you got MS-DOS for Tandy PCs or Digital Equipment Corp., they would not run the same programs. for a program like "Lotus 1-2-3", there were slightly different versions for Tandy MS-DOS or DEC MS-DOS, or the many other "workalike" PCs.

[@spht9ng]

I feel like retro MS tech heads will find something useful to do with this source code

[@kensmith5694]

DOS-4 is too buggy to use. DOS-3 was better.

[@kreuner11]

​@@kensmith5694and we have freedos

[@orbatos]

No, and Brodie covered why. It's not just ancient but buggy too. FreeDOS is far better and DOSBox or even dosemu are all most people need.

[@printstrname5346]

I used MS-DOS for a lot of my secondary school time! The CNC laser cutter in our technology lab used MS-DOS only software running on an ancient Dell(?) PC. I also did the lighting for all of my school's productions (plays, musicals, etc.) and the machine that controlled it all ran a custom version of MS-DOS. It even had a copy of frogger on it for when I got bored during rehearsals!

[@tonytins]

MS-DOS' code is pretty damn well documented, making good for understanding x86 assembly. Likewise, several projects have gotten it to compile on FreeDOS and MS-DOS itself.

[@knghtbrd]

There is probably Windows NT 3.51 code in Windows today. There is probably Windows 3.0 code in Windows today. The actual open sourcing of MS-DOS 4.0 is probably not that useful except for maybe some retrocomputing folks-they can probably make something work more compatibly on older hardware than they previously could as a result and might even start using a bugfixed version of the OS on their 8088, 8086, and maybe even 286 machines. The DOS release that would cause people to flip their lids would be MS-DOS 5.0. DOS 5.0 was useful right up until Windows 95 was released and could be used anywhere from the original 8088 (you might want more RAM) up to the latest machines that can run Windows 3.1, which have UEFI and an amd64-compatible CPU, not that there's any good reason to do that. Still, DOS 5 and Windows 3.1 are the codebases I'd love to see open sourced. And I expect we never will, because I bet code from both still lives inside Windows 11 to this day.

[@JonBrase]

I doubt that there's much code of Win16 origin left in modern Windows.

[@gwgux]

There is. Have you ever clicked on the application icon in a window's title bar and got that little menu? That same menu in the upper left hand corner of the title bar is the same one from the windows in Windows 3.0. It may have been re-written/ported to work on 32-bit and eventually 64-bit versions of Windows, but the same menu is still there at least as far as Windows 10 (Windows 10 was my last version of Windows so until I see Windows 11 at work, I don't know if it's still there in Windows 11).

[@infinitivez]

Used MSDOS since 2.0, and actually took a certification class for it somewhere around 6.0. My first interaction with it, was following the step by step instructions from the manual. Which included low level formatting a hard drive. My dad wasn't too pleased with me.

[@horusfalcon]

Yeek! What? You didn't read the part where "this operation will DESTROY all data on your hard drive if any exists..."? I bet your dad was upset. Hope that wasn't his business records...

[@stefanalecu9532]

​@@horusfalconyou must be fun at parties

[@infinitivez]

@@horusfalcon I um, started computers at a very early age. Learned how to input Vic20 basic programs by hand, before I even learned to read. So even though I saw all the warnings, I was convinced it was something that needed to be done before I could use it / didn't really understand what the idea of delete and format was. Thankfully, no. Mostly it was dirty pictures and video games. 😆

[@WilliamTrentgtrent9]

IIRC some versions of DOS contain applications and frameworks that contain disputed code. Depending on the version, it might be difficult to properly relicense it. They may have to gut certain parts of it, that they don’t actually own. (Allegedly)

[@Fenrasulfr]

As a very young child, my dad used a government grant to buy a Gateway 2000 running Windows 95 so that is the closest I got to using Dos other than dosbox trying to run some of my old windows games.

[@DelticEngine]

The last separate version of MS-DOS was version 6.22. Somewhere, I think I still have the original installation 3.5in floppies of MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.

[@jsrodman]

One possible reason is dos 5 was about when Microsoft started deliberately breaking comparability as a strategy. Releasing the source might have a tiny chance of opening liability.

[@DaveAxiom]

I have childhood memories of MSDOS. The earliest is of me booting my game 5 1/4" floppy disk, entering "dir", and entering the game I wanted to play.

[@whophd]

I was only a kid, but MS-DOS 4.0 was ignored. 3.3 lasted forever, and only got pushed around by 5.0 and 6.0, 6.2, etc, but for a while 3.3 was still the most popular. 5.0 had the ugly thing where every floppy disk got serial numbered. It didn’t like making exact copies of disks anymore.

[@matthewdee6023]

I feel personally attacked! Not only did I use it, but ran WIndow 3.1 on top of it (followed by Windows 3.11 for workgroups.) FOR A LIVING. I was also studying part-time by the time Windows 95 came about. You kids today don't know the suffering of editing files so that your Ad-Lib sound card would work! All so that you could play games in glorious EGA color! And when I had some spare cash, a gray-scale VGA! Well, unless you run Linux....

[@squirlmy]

so is the picture in your icon very old, or is it not you at all? Linux required a 386 processor, and didn't even have a bootable CD to run installation until Debian 2.0, ~1998

[@gor.]

Just yesterday I saw video about browser for DOS and now this. It's new meta guys.

[@dingokidneys]

My second child was born in 1988 when DOS 4.0 came out. I was 27 and working as an accountant with a specialty in IT auditing. Also tech support for the audit team which meant I got to do many installs of DOS and WordStar along with fixing what had been borked and building backup and menuing systems for all the teams machines. Also wrote various utilities in whatever languages I could get from shareware distributors which included Modula/2, Small-C and assembler. Good times.

[@liorean]

MS-DOS 3.3 and whatever version of DR-DOS was present at the time, were my first OSes on my parents's monochrome laptops, late 80ies. Years later (1991-ish) I got my first computer, a then-old 286 clone with PC-DOS 4.0. With updates to the DOS version to MS-DOS 5.0 and later 6.22, that was my system until I got my a brand new Pentium. It was loaded with dualboot DOS (Believe it was Caldera? I had it on that machine at one point, anyway) and OS/2 Warp, but came with a Windows 95 upgrade option and a CD-ROM when that got released a few months after. Sadly, I never had a real programming environment back then (Heck, before MS-DOS 5.0 I was using EDLIN!), except for QBasic and a Turbo Pascal version with no manuals. How I wish I still had those old computers now, they'd be a fun tinkering platform.

[@AshTheArcticFox]

Good on them.. now do Windows next.

[@atemoc]

I would rather not lay my eyes on Window's source code. I have endured enough suffering with leaked code.

[@lucyinchat]

Win1 is!

[@javier82236]

The duality of Linux users

[@KSPAtlas]

Granted, it's only the versions up to 3.1

[@musicalneptunian]

Ed Bott: No! Mary Jo Foley: No! Paul Thurrott: No! Wagner the ZDNET Msoft shill: No!

[@rafaburdzy449]

Maybe there are still selling it for machines working in factories, I heard that Windows 98 is still use in productions use , but I just heard

[@kalinmir]

I've seen things...on our presses, oldest from early 00' and newest from 2017, the main control units run the control software on something that looks like 98.

[@matankribus5080]

there is HUGE educational value to this. 8086 is what begginers learn for code instructions, having examples from MS-DOS will be HUGE for intreductory. but academies won't do it... because they suck and boring old turds.

[@dinizbortolotto]

I still have my MS-DOS 6.3 Course Completion Certificate (in paper) for historical archive purposes. 🤓😜

[@paradoxmo]

What the heck is MS DOS 6.3??? And why did you need a course for it?

[@throwaway6478]

@@paradoxmo He probably means PC DOS 6.3, which was a real IBM product.

[@BirdLopers]

oh yes, i used MS-DOS 1987 at work when i was a teenager, NCommander Utilities, word processors printing on a _line-printer_ , LOTUS-123 spreadsheets, DBase II... then in later years alongside Win95a to ME... handling config.sys & autoexec.bat for my work & private-life colleagues was the most fun, but the whole DOS scene was interesting. mind you, my start was System-80 & BASIC (& machine code) , then Apple ][ (& 6502 assembly), so QDOS / DR-DOS / MS-DOS was a step _up_ ;P

[@patrickprucha5522]

yes i did use MS-DOS. I loved version 5.0 with it task switching, and the MS-DOS terminal graphics window where users could put aliases and manage their disks. You could switch in to do some stuff and switch out after completing it.

[@guss77]

At about that time, we were in the big change from almost everyone running Commodore (64 and 128) and ZX Spectrum to "IBM compatible" PCs. My first DOS device was running MS-DOS 3.30. I think releasing MS-DOS 6.0 would be much more interesting, but they likely will never do it as at that point (probably starting with 5.0 actually) they started integrating technology licensed from other companies - such as DOS Shell and Stacker, and it is unlikely that Microsoft can relicense these as they arent owned by Microsoft.

[@JohnGMeadows]

DOS 4.x sent me running screaming back to DOS 3.3 back in the day.

[@horusfalcon]

Yeah, I remember 4.01 being particularly buggy and unstable. 5.0 fixed a lot of problems and fielded a lot of new capabilities, and 6.22 was like that old Rolls Royce Silver Shadow ad: all you heard when it was running was the ticking of the clock. Back in those days, every MS-DOS machine I built had Quikmenu III on it. Man, I thought that was slick.

[@JohnGMeadows]

@@horusfalcon I remember attending a launch event for 5.0 and being excited about the better memory management tools built in. For my job at the time I had to run multiple network stacks in real mode, and there wasn't a whole lot of free memory left after!

[@gwgux]

@@horusfalcon I loved Quick Menu back in the day!

[@CrassSpektakel]

My Amiga 1000 in 1985 came with a software PC-Emulator and MSDOS 2.11 - which was able to use four floppy drives 3.5 and 5.25 inch and up to 720kByte on all drives. MSDOS 4.01 came with my 286 bridge board but I barely used it. It didn't even had a decent command line editor. I quickly moved to DRDOS.

[@CrassSpektakel]

One thing to mention: The Software PC Emulator was not "IBM compatible" but "MSDOS compatible". Software accessing the hardware or BIOS didn't work, only Software using DOS as by the book worked. Which back then was a lot, at least if you didn't play games. Oh, and it was SLOW. A 1Mhz 8088 would have run circles around it.

[@IndianaJoenz]

In 1988 I was like 5, but I was totaly using MS-DOS 3.1 on my Compaq Portable. Pllaying CGA games, learning BASIC. I used it for many years. It's a good OS. Maybe we will get MS-DOS 5 or 6.22 with a permissive license someday.

[@sundhaug92]

The DOS 4 source-code was actually something they didn't find in their own archives but in the private archives of former MS CTO Ray Ozzie

[@xXRealXx]

The earlist version of Windows I used was XP... And I'm 22

[@sphbecker]

DOS five and six, even if they were shipped separately, we’re designed to run with specific versions of Windows. It’s likely that those versions of DOS some OS level hooks to help windows, so they may just be acting super safe and not wanting to open anything that could even remotely be related to windows.

[@horusfalcon]

My first XT Clone was a V30 with only 256 MB of RAM and two floppies. It ran MS-DOS 2.11, 3.3, 4.0, 4.01 (briefly), 5.0 and then, finally 6.22. It also successfully ran DR-DOS 5.0, 6.0. and 7.0. I gave it away to an old friend right after I built my first 386 (I never owned a 286 machine). Wow... those were the days.

[@tcscomment]

maybe you meant 256kB

[@throwaway6478]

@@tcscomment He definitely meant 256KB. Even the Cray X-MP (a contemporary supercomputer consting $15 millions) only had 128MB.

[@KanokYT]

I was 4 years old when 4.0 came out. Man, how time flies...the first version of MS-DOS I worked with was 6.22. Ah, the memories!

[@iefbr15]

In my 20's I was writing bios code for CP/M for new Z-80 machines while porting "Software Tools in Ratfor" to CP/M

[@lgajai]

I've used standalone MS-DOS as main OS. Mainly 5.0 and 6.22. And I have my first working XT Jr. computer by IBM. Which has MS-DOS as OS since that time. Hacking DOS to play games. Writing batch files not only autoexec.bat, but any others to make something interesting. I liked that time window of PC era.

[@mylinuxgr5050]

LOL, I am one of those! I was 21 in 1988, needing two different floppy disks for DOS to start!

[@NullPointer]

The character map in windows is from 3.1

[@dono42]

I got into computers with my neighbors 286. I was in early elementry school when I got my first computer: a 386 SX 16 MHz. It was still the DOS era and pre-Windows 3, though in preparation for the upcoming Windows 3 I double the memory to the recommended 2 MB. I think the hard disk was 40 MBs. I remember DOS 3.3 and up, along with Windows 3 and up, though I think I skipped ME. Windows 3.0, 95, and 98 crashed nearly daily. While NT brought stability, I fondly remember the DOS and early Windows days as just being much more fun compared to XP and later.

[@MrDowntemp0]

Yeah. Weird that 6.22 isn't released as well. I wonder if either Dosbox or freedos have any issues that these old files might help them resolve.

[@saumyacow4435]

I was your age in 1988 :) And my first computer was a single board computer and it ran 1802 hex code and I had an Amiga long before I ever touched a DOS box :)

[@AnimalFacts]

DOS 3.3 is the earliest I remember using. My first PC ran DOS 5.0. Before that I had a Commodore 64.

[@KvapuJanjalia]

I was surprised to find out that Windows library of core cryptographic functions is open source (Or, more like "source-open").

[@stevethepocket]

Probably because they want as many people as possible looking it over for possible flaws. Microsoft does actually make most of their source code available to a select few (working at universities and such) to get "second opinions" on how well they're handling security.

[@yogimew]

15:03 Win2000 is NT-based. (WinNT 5.0)

[@gwgux]

I was 6 in 1988. I grew up on DOS PCs back then and there were quite a few different graphical environments available at the time, not just Windows 1-3. My favorite non-Windows GUI was Quick Menu.

[@squirlmy]

better than GUIs there were menu and text interfaces "TUIs" WordPerfect had it's own. WP 5.1 was the best word processor for a long time. When a user learned all the "shortcuts", the various key-pressing combinations to run various processes, it was quite irritating to switch to MS Windows Word

[@lesh4357]

Yes I made use of it in late 80's. Ran a bunch of AutoCad workstations running on top of MSDOS. What fun, having to configure access to memory above 1MB. Also having to configure drivers and IRQ's by hand. Networking to Novell file server. RG58cu (thin-net) cabling. Everything Plug & Play now - simples 😆.

[@jamesschmames6416]

I used to be a DOS gamer. I remember when DOS 4 came out and upgrading to it.

[@bettis211]

My first computer was a 486 with MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1 on it. I learned about writing scripts on that by trying to replicate a text based program loader I saw on my uncles computer.

[@bitterseeds]

heh. I was 19 in 1988. And yes, I used this until I got to Uni. When I got to Uni the Windows lab was always full but the Mac lab wasn't so I used Macs mostly in Uni because I could get lab time at will. This was until I could afford my own PC. My PC then was either Linux (yes, that early) or dual booted between NeXTSTep and OS/2. ;)

[@whtiequillBj]

I know this isn't a comment about the video, but did you do a video back when Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation and even if you did have your thoughts changed on it since then?

[@ClaireFelidae]

My first PC compatible (I started with a TI 99 4/A) was a Tandy 1000 TX (80286 at 8mhz and 640k of ram). It ran Dos 3.3.2 on a 720kb double sided low density 3.5" floppy. I got this computer as a hand me down from a neighbor in 1995 and I used this computer until 1999 i believe and actually filled out reports for school using an old Star NX1000 dot matrix printer.

[@keithroberts3055]

Brodie, the first version of MS DOS I remember using was 3.0. I was 24 when MS DOS 4.0 was released. Microsoft likely hasn't released code for 5.0 and 6.0 because some of the algorithms used by the included anti-virus and disk compression utilities may still be in use. Please note that I do NOT believe the actual code is being used, just that the algorithms have been re-coded.

[@throwaway6478]

You are correct, it's all licensing: DOS 5 started including utilities from third-parties (UNDELETE and UNFORMAT were from Norton, for example), and this accelerated with DOS 6.x (DEFRAG and MSAV were from Central Point IIRC), and DoubleSpace stole code from Stacker. As a result, there will never been an open source release of those versions.

[@quaesitrix881]

Aww that takes me back I grew up on Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS :') "Look mom I can type the magic spell to launch lemmings from the floppy disk I'M A WIZAAAAAARD"

[@1DwtEaUn]

likely the whole patent / copyright issues with doublespace/drivespace compression at least for the 6.x releases

[@CRYPTiCEXiLE]

as a kid in the 80s i remember ms dos 5.. but didnt hada computer at home in 1993 ms-dos 6.22 is the dos i remember a lot growing up

[@supremesonicbrazil]

Huh, another '98 fellow, nice 🤝

[@Bigoukun]

While I would be hard-pressed to use any version of MsDOS-like system today, I did use a version of it at some point. It was mainly to start Windows 3.11 back then, on a computer that was long past its prime, but still MsDOS. (Fun fact, that computer terminated its life with a virus that could run on it, but was to old to run any anti-virus able to purge said virus.) Later, I had the "reduced DOS" included so W95 and then W98 could run, before switching to WinXP.

[@taylor85345]

My earliest computer experience was being 5 years old playing the Putt-Putt and Freddi Fish games on my grandpa's IBM PC running Windows 3.1. I still keep a copy of Windows 3.1 installed in dosbox for the sake of nostalgia.

[@nemtudom5074]

Cool, wake me up when the final version of DOS is released, then i'll give it a quick look

[@rogerlundstrom6926]

I think you may not quite get how much of a wild-man's land programming was back then. "Copying code" was more a matter of standard than exception. Industry secrecy was more a matter of not getting sued for ALL the code you stole somewhere. The compiled code may look identical but that is because most things were (and actually are) more a matter of.. well. .Processors only worked one way. A lot of things were pretty much already a set standard just because it was algorithms that were open.. The compiled code MAY literally be identical just because you'd have to chose a foolish way to do things for it to look differently.. BUT!.. if you have the source-code you'll have stuff such as variable name, comments, etc, that can be used as evidence of the copying and pasting they did.. AND since this was from before the internet a LOT! of the copying and pasting were also in part a matter of illegal industry spionage (or more commonly that corporations have a joint adventure BUT get annoyed with each-other and break up and argue about who had the right to the codebase.. BUT of course both parties HAD the code base. .and.. may look at it for their own "versions".. I'd point to Windows Vs. OS/2 as a perfect example of this)..... So.. You have to wait until you can't get sued before you post incriminating code. (OR rewrite it, which would be a costly and non-rewarding endeavor)

[@michaelwright2986]

I think I got into MS-DOS at v. 3.x: I remember people saying that v. 3.31 was really good. I honestly can't remember v. 4.0, because by that time we were working with a really good-character based shell (our work was writing). But v. 5.0 was good, because it came with a game of gorillas throwing explosive bananas at each on the Manhattan skyline. My wife and I whiled away some happy time at that: last game I played. I do now wonder if I could resuscitate some really ancient computers with MS-DOS and PC-Write, or even Wordstar.

[@caseyjp1]

26 in '88. I didn't start actually working with or using DOS until version 4. I did "use" ms-dos 2 on a few machines on jobsites. Those were the days of beating your head against the wall with drivers and memory managers just to get Aces over the Pacific or Wing Commander to run. Also the days of Hexen/Doom coop multiplayer and the added fun times of coax, barrel and T-connectors for LAN parties. :-D

[@MonochromeWench]

Later version of Dos contained licensed third party code so if they do get source releases they will be an incomplete cleaned-up version missing bits. DOS 4 isn't too different from later versions, the only real things included later versions missing from 4.0 is Himen.sys and mscdex. Himem is where the links between dos and Windows starts. Licensed third party code is almost certainly the reason we won't see source releases of 16 bit Windows not because it is too similar to modern Windows. Win16 codebase would be completely useless for anything modern but would be nice for historic interest as it would reveal why a lot of Win32 is the way it is. Win32 is supposed to be source compatible with Win16 (it's really not) but there isn't really anything from 16 bit Windows that you'd want to use today. There is zero chance any 32 bit Windows would be open sourced, it really is just too close to modern Windows and would also have limited utility other than to cause problems for Microsoft. NT is NT and each version hasn't made big changes from the last.

[@lucius1976]

4.01 was my first Dos for my first PC - a 80286.

[@Z1atk0]

I was 17 in 1988, and still using MS-DOS at that time. I kept it around until 1997 (even played OG Quake 1 on it! 😎), until it became clear that Quake II would only run on either Win95 or Linux. So I installed Slackware and never looked back. Today, I'm on Slackware64 15.0, and it's still the original system, upgraded from 3.4 (or 3.6?) through all those years, never ever reinstalled even once. 🤓 😁

[@TheSulross]

was about two years into my software dev career in 1988 and first child born that year

[@justinhall3243]

I was 17 in 1988... get off my lawn!

[@MichaelZimmermann]

There's gonna be at least 1 person who would use windows95 instead of paying for 11 if it was open sourced 🙈

[@bkahlerventer]

MS-DOS 4.0 was the first OS that Microsoft and IBM worked on to replace MS OS/2 1.x and IBM OS/2 1.x with a new OS. It was abandoned after a fallout

[@johnstath9666]

Don’t forget the memory restrictions of the time

[@maxmuster7003]

Memory restrictions? On intel 80386 i used the first time the undocumented 16 bit BIG Real Mode with a segment size of 4 gb for DS, ES, FS, GS segment and A20 address line on with EMS driver dissabled. This allows to read/write the entire 32 bit address space from 16 bit MS DOS, but the code and the stack have to use the first mb of RAM and are limited to 64 kb segment size.

[@SchwaAlien]

I had the unfortunate experience of running MS-DOS on a 286 with 5 1/4” floppies as a kid… which ran MS flight simulator, terribly. I did get ahold of an early version of Windows for it, that was pretty exciting at the time.

[@jasongalloway4645]

First home computer was an Acer aspire system with win 95b....still remember having to boot into dos mode to play some games like shadow warrior or crusader no remorse

[@tassaron]

I used DOS from within Windows 3, 95, and 98, but I didn't learn to use the commandline until XP, so all I back then was launch games or really old software which supported graphical interaction.

[@stevethepocket]

I have never seen DOS 4 in the wild, nor any of the other versions they've released, as it happens. My first DOS PC was an XT class my uncle was tossing out that was bundled with 3.3 on a floppy disk, and everything after that had already been upgraded to 5 or more commonly 6.22. I wonder if 4 represented the first and last actual jump in system requirements, possibly requiring installation to a hard drive, so anyone who could upgrade that far kept going.

[@Scoopta]

The first computer I ever had was a hand me down from my grandpa running Windows ME, outside that never really used DOS.

[@rsnhostmaster]

I've used MS-DOS 3.2, 4.0, 5.0, 6.22. Also Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and ME. I played a little with NT 4.0, 8.0, 8.1. And extensively used 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 10, 11. Dos drivers configured and installed at Boot time were a pain to deal with. I remember booting to DOS and loading Windows 3.1 from the command line.

[@autohmae]

3:42 as is often the case, they probably outsourced something to an other company and don't have the rights to release it ?

[@d3stinYwOw]

Not only legacy hardware - also to have hard real-time available in seemingly familiar setting for people to use in small PCs ;)

[@s2meister]

I guess I am one of the strange ones, I still have my original IBM PC with dual belt drive floppy's and DOS 1.0. And yes it still runs.

[@Sebanisu]

The earliest dos version I remember is 5. I know I used earlier versions. 6.22 was like that last version that wasn't built into windows I think. I at least don't think you could buy dos 7+ they just were a part of windows 95 98 and ME. I played dos games and used batch files to make menus to make it easier to start my games. Like 1 for doom, 2 for commander keen, or something. I liked Windows 3.1 much more than Windows 95. My dad was kind of a pirate just coping floppies at work to bring stuff home, or descrambling cable channels.

[@mikeonthecomputer]

little correction: "MS-DOS 7.1" was part of Windows 95B (OEM Service Release 2.0), released in 1996. The significant advancement over the original Windows 95 was the addition of FAT32. Windows 98 used the same DOS as 95B.

[@cjhammel]

Was 23 in 1988. My first computer had MS-DOS 3.3.

[@keesmills2019]

Wow, as old as you are when DOS 4 got released in 88 so you're 26 now? I was 7 at the time, and got access to our first pc when I was around 10. Not sure which DOS version it had but it had those big old 5 inch "floppy" drives. It didn't even have a hard drive! We could play games like Tapper though, fun times :D

[@AdamDaviesSussex]

I assumed Microsoft bought Github to close more source code. Good to see this. Even if it's stuff I remember as a child.. I was 6.

[@CrackDavidson1]

My first computer was a 486 DOS machine when i was something like 7-8 years old about in 93-94. It was exciting times with pentium, win95 and voodoo gfx coming shortly after, which i all had. Windows ME kind of put me off of computers when I had that for a few months. :D

[@AllanSavolainen]

DOS 5 onwards contain new utilities like memmaker and disk compression and MS was sued and I think lost some cases and had to pay for patents so might not be FLOSSable.

[@MasterHigure]

My dad would some times get to borrow a laptop home from work when I was a wee lad in the early 90's. It booted into a command prompt, and we had to run the command "win" to get Windows 3.11 to run (I can only guess that that meant it booted into MS DOS). The monitor was black-and-white. The floppy drive was external. I played Tetris and Aforce. Good times.

[@davidbeveridge6040]

I first used MS-DOS 2.11, 42 years ago on a NEC APC with dual 8" floppy drives. We could have continued using CP/M but DOS was a shiny new thing.

[@vmiguel1988]

The cryptography library is one of the biggest part which has been crafted for years and still used in windows 11

[@xKynOx]

I don't think DOS was out till i left school we still used 8 bit BBC micros.