Ask HN: Why did the old school MS guys release source?

It was the early to mid 90s, 11 year old me sporting a 486, and boredom with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups led me to explore my DOS diskettes.

My handful of DOS 6.22 stiffy disks were light brown, with a white label - crisp black print - and I kept them in this deep purple Dysan disk box.

Fuck I loved that box.

And one day I watched Hackers (1995).

I instantly went exploring those disks, and soon discovered GORILLA.BAS

And thanks to some older kid at school, I discovered QBasic.

Completely changed my life!

So I sometimes wonder, why did the MS guys include the source code for GORILLA.BAS on DOS disks?

I would have loved to have been in that meeting.