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Comment by lchengify | Hacker News Reader

So if MS-DOS 4 was released in 1986, and it is now 2024, that's a 37 year gap between release and open source.

That means Windows XP should be open sourced by ... 2038. Not as far away as it seems. I'll add it to my calendar.

I doubt Microsoft would ever open-source any NT Windows versions because the current ones are based on the same code, just with added touchscreen nonsense, adware, and overt contempt for the user.

We may see Windows 9x open-sourced. But then again, it's a stretch because Win32 API is still in wide use today. Releasing the sources for 32-bit Windows versions even this old may have an adverse effect on Microsoft's market domination.

But maybe ReactOS will reach beta by 2038. Does this count as an open-source version of Windows XP? :D

If you really wish to look at XP sources and don't care much about the legal aspect of it, you can do so right now. They were leaked.

NT sources leaked, same for 2000. There is also leaked DOS 6 beta. The only thing releasing stuff this old brings is nerd goodwill.

All open-source projects that deal with reimplementing parts of Windows, particularly Wine and ReactOS, consider those leaked sources radioactive and would not accept any patches if there's even a slightest suspicion that the patch author gleaned anything from those sources. Those same sources officially released under an open-source license would change that.

I wouldn’t assume Microsoft execs view increased capabilities to run windows programs in Linux as a bad thing, when they think about the matter at all. They would certainly prefer that such a capability be developed by someone else, so they don’t have to support it.

> I doubt Microsoft would ever open-source any NT Windows versions because the current ones are based on the same code, just with added touchscreen nonsense, adware, and overt contempt for the user.

Initiatives like MinWin and OneCore, secure kernel, device guard,... caused lots of rewrites and moving code around.

> Releasing the sources for 32-bit Windows versions even this old may have an adverse effect on Microsoft's market domination.

I disagree that releasing Windows 9x source code would have any impact on MS market domination.

> I doubt Microsoft would ever open-source any NT Windows versions because the current ones are based on the same code

Nowadays releasing something NT like XP may seem crazy. But in 15 years it will be so far away from future Windows, that it won't be that crazy.

> But in 15 years it will be so far away from future Windows, that it won't be that crazy.

It's not like the NT kernel will be going away from current Microsoft products anytime soon.

2038, you say? If your calendar is based on Unix epoch time, then ensure that you have upgraded to 64-bit timestamps before then.

ReactOS will still be buggy AF by then I'm sure. I had hoped they'd at least have it to Windows 2000 alpha levels by now.

A lot of XP components are still in use in modern windows, whereas DOS was completely replaced around the time Windows XP came around.

Around the time Windows 2000 came around.

Up to Windows 3.11 it was a GUI on top of DOS. Windows 95, 98, Me used DOS to boot and it was still possible to stop the booting process at a DOS prompt (although in Me this was no longer official). Finally Windows 2000 had nothing to do with it as it is NT based.

Windows 2000 was part of the professional NT line, though, and was the companion of Me for the millennium releases. As far as I know, 2000 wasn't marketed to home users. I think what the comment you replied to is saying is the the transition away from DOS wasn't completed for both professional and home markets until XP, which unified everything under NT for all markets.

this is accurate; the 2000 line targeted business, and if you remember having a consumer computer with 2000 pro it didn't support a lot of hardware.

Can confirm. I upgraded my 98 box to 2000 and never did get some of my hardware working. When I told people I was using 2000 everybody assumed I had stolen it from work. I didn't. My friend stole it from work and shared it with me ;-)

A license key of 11111-1111111 worked, if I remember correctly. :-)

Nice part of that pain came when XP was released. Win 2000 drivers mostly all happily loaded into Win XP !

Drivers were kinda a mess from what I remember in 2000 especially on the graphics card side of things. The HW vendors needed more time to switch over.

Around the year 2000, I was studying computer science at a university. Most of their PC's ran on Windows 3.1. I was using it at home. But one day, Microsoft sent me an offer: I could purchase the student release of Windows 2000 workstation for a mere $25.00. I went for it, and found it better than the Windows NT nap-sayers at school said. I don't know why I was contacted. Probbably because of other Microsoft programs I'd bought at the student bookstore.

Windows 2000 was a pretty great OS. Used to enjoy using a Litestep shell instead of explorer. While it wasn't great for a lot of games, many did run fine. I liked it a lot better than OS/2 that I ran previously.

I generally ran 2-4x the amount of RAM as most did. Still do. Pretty sure this made a lot of the difference.

Hey, Listestep what a blast from the past :)

I rain it until it wouln't run sensible anymore in Windoes 10. I then ditched Windows for Linux soon after - I can recommend KDE Plasma if you want to have something thats sorta configureable enough like Litestep was.

I remember running both litestep and windowblinds. I can't remember which one I liked better.

windowblinds is a window decoration customizer - LiteStep does nothing of the sort :) LiteStep completely replaces explorer.exe as the shell host and you can then customize what functions you want to have in your UI. The windows themself would stay looking the same.

Windows 2000 Pro was what I used at home for a long time and it was great. NT 3 and 4 were absolutely terrible which might explain your NT naysayers at school. I never once had to reapply a service pack in Win2k

Still remember the first time I touched Windows NT 4. Half an hour into work experience: Opened up a printer dialogue set a setting that hard crashed the PC; then slowly every other PC in the building as soon as they tried to print (i.e. just as they had _finished_ whatever they were working on; but often just before they _saved_ it).

I liked NT4. The only reason I upgraded to 2000 was for a newer version of directx (6.0 I think?).

Windows 2000.

Also NT4, NT3.51, NT3.5, NT3.1...

Tangent, but Windows NT had a POSIX subsystem for a while.

Kind of for a very long while. You then had a descendant SFU from some SP of NT4 to XP / Server 2003, then a further one SUA until Windows 8 / Server 2012. With some code flowing between various companies. I think SFU still used the Posix NT subsystem core. Probably also SUA, although I'm less sure. Not really the case WSL1, though (although probably the core NT kernel was more ready to support it, thanks to its history).

I knew about SFU, Services For Unix. What was SUA?

Subsystem for Unix-based Applications also known as "Interix"

From NT 3.1 until Windows 8.0. Windows 8.1 removed it, and Windows 10 offered WSL1 as its replacement.

Windows 9x and ME, yet used bits Iog DOS beyond bootstrapping. They were using config.sys to load drivers

Even ancient Windows includes many 3rd party libraries. I would not expect any Win 9x or NT 3.51+ version of Windows to be open sourced in it's entirety. I hope I'm wrong.

Yeah, just the font stuff was such a mess. I’m hopeful someone will power through those problems.

I'm more interested in them open-sourcing something from the 3.x/9x line.

NT seems to have been far more studied, and of course there were the infamous leaks of those along the way.

We need to wait for the NSA backdoors to expire first ;)

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