If you’re taking requests I’d love to see MS-DOS 5.0 or at least QBasic next.
But this is really great.
What sort of tactics did you use to convince them? Maybe I can apply them to where I work too...
Doing an investigation of what licensed software was used and possibly trying to get permission from the relevant rights holders (if you can even figure out who owns the rights so many years later) can be a big and expensive task, unfortunately. I understand why companies might not want to take that on (even though it sucks).
Similarly, with Windows, the third-party components are generally inessentials such as certain device drivers, games, some optional system components like the ZIP file support in Windows Explorer-you would still have a usable OS with these bits ripped out. Parts of NTVDM are third-party licensed, although I believe that’s mainly the software CPU emulator used on RISC platforms, I think x86 was mostly Microsoft’s own code
From MS-DOS 6, remove the defrag, backup and antivirus programs, and DoubleSpace/DriveSpace, and that should I think cover all external code.
If I remember correctly, it didn't include CD-ROM drivers, just MSCDEX to run on top of one... and the network stack was an optional extra. I'm not even 100% sure it includes a mouse driver as standard.
IBM PC DOS 6.3, 7.0 and 7.1 include some additional IBM code: Rexx in place of QBASIC, the IBM E editor, but not much else.
He has lots of YouTube videos about the zip stuff.
From the source it's a little different but there's little integration between the bits.
Of all the things people here probably hate about the current "modern" Microsoft and its products, political incorrectness in decades-old code is far down the list or not even a consideration.
I am close to writing a browser extension that does a find and replace to reverse change these imposed, humourless, coddled changes.
I will be your first paying customer
I empathise with myself first, and will use what ever word feels right in the situation. I'd rather speak my mind than please everyone. That's sanity for me and for many others.
> I empathise with myself first and will use what ever word feels right in the situation
And you're doing the same right now. Isn't your use of the word 'selfish' in the thread 'hurtful', and therefore not empathetic to me? By chiding me aren't you empathising with yourself more, and wishing that I would defer to your feelings instead of my own?
The difference between you and I is I don't claim that a virtue is supreme and then immediately enact its opposite, which is really what makes this drive for 'inclusive language' and 'empathy' so repugnant to me.
For the company there are as good as zero downsides to not doing anything, and a few small upsides and a few low risk, but potentially very costly (in dollars or reputation) if they happen downsides.
That makes not doing anything the default choice for the company.
For (former) employees who worked on this, the upsides are higher; they’ll get some of their work published for the first time. That’s why we see individuals push for this every now and then.
Frankly, there should be regulations guaranteeing source code release after a few decades, and that all code, including third party code, is released from copyright protection. In return, companies should be granted legal protection from any potential legal consequences. It was over 30 years ago. The idea that somebody should be able to sue Microsoft for copying code or a third party can sue them for releasing it or that they should in any way be punished for unsavory language used THIRTY years ago is clearly utter insanity.
Before the popularization of source control, things were different. A lot of people would just edit code Villy-nilly, only keeping very recent backups and the source for major versions, if that. There were no commits and hence no tags, so reproducing the code used to build a specific, minor version might be completely impossible. There were no branches, so ports and patches were often made by copying the code tree, doing some changes, compiling and then forgetting about the whole thing. It was entirely possible for a game studio to give their code over to another team or company, have them do a port and never actually care much for the ported code themselves.
Then there's the problem of external components, most of which were licensed, third-party software, not open source libraries. Even now, they may technically still fall under copyright and be impossible to release.