Reading Between the Lines

[Steve R.]

Microsoft, has recently had a spat of favorable sounding media articles of how they are now "supporting" open source efforts. A Verge headline: Microsoft: we were wrong about open source. Really? Is Microsoft really changing its tune?

Microsoft president Brad Smith now believes the company was wrong about open source. “Microsoft was on the wrong side of history when open source exploded at the beginning of the century, and I can say that about me personally,” said Smith in a recent MIT event. Smith has been at Microsoft for more than 25 years and was one of the company’s senior lawyers during its battles with open-source software.

The good news is that, if life is long enough, you can learn … that you need to change,” added Smith. Microsoft has certainly changed since the days of branding Linux a cancer. The software giant is now the single largest contributor to open-source projects in the world, beating Facebook, Docker, Google, Apache, and many others.

Well maybe Microsoft has been " the single largest contributor to open-source projects". But, as I have read these types of articles, it seems the contribution that Microsoft has made is akin to being a Trojan Horse. If Microsoft really was "buying into" the open source concept, they could immediately do a couple of things. One, revise the Windows boot-loader to recognize other operating systems. Second, allow Windows to "see" other partitions that don't use the Windows file system.

Since, these obvious simple actions have not been undertaken, it appears that what Microsoft is actually doing is creating an open source subsystem embedded in Windows so that the customer would still be required to buy a Windows license. Not much benefit in that, as you can install an open source operating system, such as Linux, without having anything to do with Windows.

Microsoft, of course, is free to keep Window proprietary. Nevertheless, it is disingenuous of them to claim that they are adopting open source standards when the customer would still be forced to buy the Windows operating system.[/quote]

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Now THAT would be interesting. For a long time, Digital Equipment Corporation distributed source code for its operating systems. I've seen code for DEC RSX-11M and VAX/VMS operating systems. Some versions of UNIX are also open.

 

[Steve R.]

Now THAT would be interesting. For a long time, Digital Equipment Corporation distributed source code for its operating systems. I've seen code for DEC RSX-11M and VAX/VMS operating systems. Some versions of UNIX are also open.

An obscure footnote type comment. There is FreeDos. Other than knowing that it exists, I know nothing about it.

FreeDOS is a complete, free, DOS-compatible operating system that you can use to play classic DOS games, run legacy business software, or develop embedded systems. Any program that works on MS-DOS should also run on FreeDOS.

Keeping the MS-DOS dream alive. We also need a moment of remembrance and silence for DR-DOS.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Though I didn't have the source code for it, I had a system that ran DR-DOS. Obsolete and discarded LONG ago.

 

[Steve R.]

A great Christmas gift for diehard DOS enthusiasts. Very interesting article to read has some interesting links too. Some masochistic people (with plenty of free time) just don't give-up. DOS lives!

SvarDOS: DR-DOS reborn as an open source OS

A #DOScember surprise: fits on a single floppy, but has a network-capable package manager

www.theregister.com

 

[Cotswold]

If you want to keep DOS alive there is V-DOS, a free application that runs in Windows and appears solid. I have run old MS-DOS software without error in it. Never looked at FreeDos, so cannot comment.

But if you want Text based screens, Harbour is a decent (and free) solution. It also allows you to move beyond 25rows and 80columns running Harbour software in windows, which is nice. I've run odd screens up of 60 rows and 200+ columns and often use 48 rows and 132 columns. Just takes a bit of getting used to without any mouse control. So no mouse, keyboard, mouse, keyboard stuff at all. Only keyboard entry which is of course far quicker as you get used to it again. However, you will need to write a program writer/generator to obtain development times nearer to those of Access though.

 

[Isaac]

Microsoft, has recently had a spat of favorable sounding media articles of how they are now "supporting" open source efforts. A Verge headline: Microsoft: we were wrong about open source. Really? Is Microsoft really changing its tune?

Well maybe Microsoft has been " the single largest contributor to open-source projects". But, as I have read these types of articles, it seems the contribution that Microsoft has made is akin to being a Trojan Horse. If Microsoft really was "buying into" the open source concept, they could immediately do a couple of things. One, revise the Windows boot-loader to recognize other operating systems. Second, allow Windows to "see" other partitions that don't use the Windows file system.

Since, these obvious simple actions have not been undertaken, it appears that what Microsoft is actually doing is creating an open source subsystem embedded in Windows so that the customer would still be required to buy a Windows license. Not much benefit in that, as you can install an open source operating system, such as Linux, without having anything to do with Windows.

Microsoft, of course, is free to keep Window proprietary. Nevertheless, it is disingenuous of them to claim that they are adopting open source standards when the customer would still be forced to buy the Windows operating system.

[/QUOTE]

True ... I'd say that the assertion of "supporting open-source" is an extremely vague assertion to make.

They're probably supporting it mostly in terms of how it can benefit them, by utilizing more open source code themselves....NOT meaning that they are going to suddenly open up their proprietary code to be Open.