«

[_r.u.s.s.]

not gonna happen
(i mean microsoft making dos open source)

[dipo]

I think the motto needs to be more "don`t give up before trying".

Micosoft made some Open Source short time ago, them also promised better interop and stop fighting Free Software. Some exampels
http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/default.mspx
http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/
http://blogs.msdn.com/dotnetinterop/
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/s...e/default.mspx
and google for microsoft releasing source code

So imho chances are bigger then 0 % !

I would like DOS 6.22 as GPL so other projects can "copy and paste" from it.

[dosraider]

Of course there's always another side to consider:
Now when I'm installing MSDos 6.22 (or whatever MS Dos) I know what I'm getting.
If it becomes 'open source' you can be sure there will be lots of screwed up things in it.

Sad but true.

[dipo]

At no point the old version will get lost. No one will every force you to use any new version. If you want you can still stick to the old/normal one.

Nothing to be scared about.

[dosraider]

Scared? Not really, no. LMAO.

But the comp problems does not come from MS Dos, but from the games/applics devs.
Lets face it, even when we were on Dos several games/applics were bugged as hell, and now you would want to adapt MS Dos to those?

The hardiest things to code are those graph card drivers, some are pretty exotic.
Nothing to see with MS Dos itself.

And MS Dos is pretty well documented afterall.

[dipo]

MS-DOS 6.22 is more compatible then dosbox. Dosbox does not have all details of the internals of MS-DOS 6.22. Dosbox and FreeDOS could become better if them would know it.

The simple question is, is it more easy to make an emulator for an old operating system if you know it`s source code or is it harded without the source code. And does it hurt if the source code is available for reference?

I see no disadventage for normal users if the source code would be released. (Someone could argue that crackers may find new exploits but this would be kinda stupid because the OS are not supported since many years and exploits won`t get patched so or so.)

As for closed source drivers and closed source hardware sure it would be even better if them would become Open Source also. Isn`t a bad idea to expand this petition to this requirement.

Some modern graphic cards by AMD have an Open Source graphic driver and AMD also has given out internal details about the card to make this driver even better. So in case of those very old hardware it`s just a matter of asking any details which are currently now not well known.

[dosraider]

Hmmmm, maybe, some valid points you have there.

If a petition will impress MS is another question.
I doubt it.