Well, Microsoft did release the sourcecode from DOS 1.25 and 2.0 in 2014 and re-released it on Github in 2018
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/re-open-sourcing-ms-dos-1-25-and-2-0/

Still a long way to Windows XP

That would be nice....one can dream.

(Also holy hell batman......110 YEARS?!? Making a profit is nice and all, but almost NO company should need to make money off a digital media product for that long)

It might be longer, i just remember coming up with that number when looking over the copyright details.


Copyright: Forever less one day

This, so much. It makes me sick how companies get these almost perpetual copyrights on things, often things they had no hand in originally (look at all the stuff Disney now owns through buying up other companies). I'm 100% for supporting the artists and devs of things, but there's no way any of the original authors ever sees a cent from something like Nintendo reselling 40 year old NES games for example.

Sorry to be blunt, but this is utter hogwash.

MS-DOS/PC-DOS was based on QDOS which was written by Seattle Computer Products (link). Microsoft bought the full rights to QDOS legally (though before telling Tim Paterson that their end customer was IBM) and made major enhancements to it in succeeding versions of MS-DOS.

Windows was written from scratch by Microsoft, and the initial release certainly shows it. Since it used x86 assembler and Mac's Finder used 68000 assembler, stealing code wouldn't have worked too well. There was however a major legal battle between MS and Apple over "look and feel" which Apple ultimately lost (anyone feeling sympathy for Apple here should consider that Apple sued other companies also on GUI look-and-feel and would have left PC users stuck with command line interfaces if they had their way).
The only company that developed a GUI for the Apple ][ was Berkeley Softworks with GEOS (don't be misled by the "Apple II Desktop" section - that's for the Apple IIGS).

There are plenty of examples of "sharp practice" by MS, some of which they have lost court cases over including:
* patent infringement involving disk compression where MS included technology from Stac Electronics in MS-DOS 6.0's DoubleSpace;
* an anti-trust investigation over MS's role in the browser wars;
* using the Applesoft license to kill off MacBasic;

so there should really be no need to invent further examples of wrongdoing here.

I didnt invent anythimg. At worst, I was misinformed. But I dont buy that. The stories have gone around too much and Kikdall had the proof before he died. You don't have that much smoke with no fire.

No, they do Looove open source... Microsoft good now.

They Love so much Open Source, to prove it, they release the XP calculator code.

LOL thanks this brightend up my day a bit.

Not sure about most users, but in my area (and i suspect elsewhere too) there are several public hospitals (if not all) that still use XP due to compatibility reasons. It's quite hard to replace / upgrade medical equipment (even if it's just a common printer), so they still make use of XP.

The way Compaq and Phoenix did this (when they reverse-engineered IBM's BIOS) was to have two teams in separate rooms, with all communications between them checked by a team of lawyers. The first team looked at the code and drew up a specification based on how it performed. The second team wrote new code that followed that specification.

IBM did provide the source code for their BIOS in their technical documentation (this was common practice for computer manufacturers at the time, along with including circuit diagrams) making this process easier, but setting a legal precedent (as Compaq and Phoenix did) is always risky, and it is the work these companies did that opened the door to IBM compatibles from other manufacturers and was arguably the most important factor in creating the PC market we enjoy today.

For open source projects like ReactOS the benefits of this leak are dubious. Having contributors scattered across the globe makes it impractical to set up the monitored groups needed for legitimate reverse engineering - even looking at leaked source code could legally compromise a project (and ReactOS has faced previous accusations of copying). The groups most likely to benefit are those providing extensions and enhancements to WinXP, where they are typically producing new code, expanding functionality.
Well, for me it's more about disliking later Windows versions (UI changes, increasingly draconian licensing, excessive resource usage, imperfect compatibility with older software) and having what I consider to be essential security software which works by modifying the kernel in ways that more recent versions of Windows try to block.

This is what happens when corporations become too big and powerful. They can use their enormous resources to skew the political/legal landscape to suit themselves.

A good example of why it's a bad idea to keep feeding the likes of Microsoft, Steam, EA ...

It's really not that old and slow. You can still get Service Pack 4 to it that is updated to at least 2019 (if one don't want to go "fishing" for a AIO ISO), and it's still faster than Windows 10.

If your computer was "really old" then that was probably the issue - try installing Windows 7+ on it and see how much slower it gets. As long as it is properly set up and properly secured (that means a decent firewall and process protection software) WinXP should run like a charm.

As for drivers, there are bucketloads of sites offering them. Unless you have a really, really out-of-the-ordinary sound card, I'd suggest you didn't look hard enough.
That depends on the distro - Mint gives you any colour you want as long as it's green or grey...

And you lose out on security - Linux has only one application-level firewall (which is a fork of a fork and still a work in progress) compared to the dozen plus available on Windows, and no interactive process control/protection software allowing you to control what runs and what it can do on your system.

That I find doubtful. For all its weaknesses, Windows 10 is still the fastest Windows I've used and I've used them since 3.11.