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Ask HN: What would it take for the Windows 98 codebase to be opensourced?

5 points by HeckFeck ↗ HN
I've been aware of a few projects - open source and proprietary - that seek to extend the life of Windows 98 well beyond what was planned. These include:

R. Lowe's patches to support > 512MB RAM, larger hard disks, even what seems to be newer WDM drivers: https://www.rloewelectronics.com/

The KernelEx project to support applications targeting later versions of Windows: http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/

There are also fascinating articles penned by those involved in the Win9x development, like this one on the role of DOS in Windows 95, https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=24063 that dispel the notion that it simply 'ran on top of DOS', it instead seems that Windows 9x was rather a vast expansion of the DOS kernel.

Given that Win 9x served as the introduction to computing for many of us, and that it has long surpassed any commercial benefit for Microsoft who now profit largely from Azure, wouldn't it be cool to have a peek behind the works? To see what could be hacked and extended combining these projects with the actual 9x codebase?

We've seen some generosity from Microsoft with the releases of the 3DMM, Console, and File Manager codebases. Building on this, wouldn't it be fun to play around with the old 9x sources and see where curious folks could take it? Not to mention the benefit it would have to older hardware and the retro enthusiast community.

And, with clear sight of the truth, perhaps we can dispel the notion that 'it's just DOS' once and for all? ;)

8 comments

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dave4420
First question, assuming that you’re Microsoft and you want to do this:

How much of the Windows 98 code base was licensed from other companies? (i.e. Windows code that MS doesn’t own the copyright to.)

Can you trace all those copyright owners?

What will they ask for in exchange for allowing you to open source the code?

h2odragon
Lose any code they don't have copyright to, release what they can, even if its not functional.

Wonder if the "fuck with Lotus" code still existed in win98, and would that still be a "secret" worth keeping.

HeckFeck
> Lose any code they don't have copyright to, release what they can, even if its not functional.

This was the approach with BSD Unix iirc. They removed the AT&T/other copyrighted code and the community filled in the rest of the gaps.

asiekierka
3DMM was a lucky one, because Microsoft and Foone managed to get sign-offs from the rightsholders of third-party code utilized.

Not even Windows 1.0x, 2.0x, or 3.x got open-sourced. In terms of complete operating systems, we got source code dumps of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0, and that was that.

I don't think it's going to happen.

pppq
Probably the only way is to get a job at Microsoft, pull it from their source code archives, and leak it.
HeckFeck
There's a plan, so long as they don't check my HN handle as part of the hiring process.
speedgoose
I think time will do. We need to wait for the many copyrights to expire and it will be in the public domain eventually.
dave4420
Many of us will be dead by then, or otherwise mentally incapable of understanding any of the code