Very Computer

by **Andy Micheal** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

Have been to discussion groups and recently heard the idea tossed
around about Microsoft looking at the possible situation of making
windows 98 into an open source os, their way of punishing the feds and
torpedoing the competition; What do you think!

Andy Micheals

by **Charlie Eber** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> Have been to discussion groups and recently heard the idea tossed
> around about Microsoft looking at the possible situation of making
> windows 98 into an open source os, their way of punishing the feds and
> torpedoing the competition; What do you think!

> Andy Micheals

HA! considering all the back doors found so far
- do you really think so bubba!

You have to think like Microsoft does Andy.
They actually want the outside world to believe
there is some secret to their sucess which
should be guarded!

INside they are thinking they don't want to
get caught in any more scandal!

So there will be NO opensource movement at
Microsoft until they plan on moving to linux.

Charlie

by **Bob Tenne** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

>
> Have been to discussion groups and recently heard the idea tossed
>around about Microsoft looking at the possible situation of making
>windows 98 into an open source os, their way of punishing the feds and
>torpedoing the competition; What do you think!
>
How exactly would making Win98 open source punish the feds, much less
torpedo the competition?

by **Basti** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> Have been to discussion groups and recently heard the idea tossed
>around about Microsoft looking at the possible situation of making
>windows 98 into an open source os, their way of punishing the feds and
>torpedoing the competition; What do you think!

> Andy Micheals

I think, M$'s source code will be called the "Joke of the Week", because
all people will laugh about how badly it is written. And when everyone
can see what badly-coded OS they're using, they'll switch to another one,
which certainly prevents M$ from releasing the Windoze source.
Believe me, they won't release it!

Bastian

by **mlw** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> > Have been to discussion groups and recently heard the idea tossed
> >around about Microsoft looking at the possible situation of making
> >windows 98 into an open source os, their way of punishing the feds and
> >torpedoing the competition; What do you think!

> > Andy Micheals

> I think, M$'s source code will be called the "Joke of the Week", because
> all people will laugh about how badly it is written. And when everyone
> can see what badly-coded OS they're using, they'll switch to another one,
> which certainly prevents M$ from releasing the Windoze source.
> Believe me, they won't release it!

> Bastian

There are other issues as well, comments like these will be made public:

"/* This should break lotus 123 */"
"/* Hack to allow powerpoint to access private bitmaps */"
"/* This should break notes */"
"/* NSA paid big bucks to this back-door */"
"/* netscape engineers are weenies */"
"/* This is a big ugly hack, fix it in next version? */"

or code fragments like:

// if(height > 480 || width > 640)
// if(height > 600 || width > 800)
// if(height > 768 || width > 1024)
if(height > 2048 || width > 2048)
{
/* No one has a screen this big. */
return FAILED;

Quote:}

Yup, I think I would like to see the source, if only for the hours of
laughs that would be provided by looking through it.

--
Mohawk Software
Windows 9x, Windows NT, UNIX, Linux. Applications, drivers, support.
Visit http://www.mohawksoft.com
"We've got a blind date with destiny, and it looks like she ordered the
lobster"

by **Donn Mille** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> There are other issues as well, comments like these will be made public:

> "/* This should break lotus 123 */"
> "/* Hack to allow powerpoint to access private bitmaps */"
> "/* This should break notes */"
> "/* NSA paid big bucks to this back-door */"
> "/* netscape engineers are weenies */"
> "/* This is a big ugly hack, fix it in next version? */"

Well, I think MS would look for these comments and remove them. But,
think of how many lines of code of Windows are actually Microsoft's.
MS can't just release the source code as-is, because a lot of it
belongs to 3rd-party vendors: Symantec for disk utils and virus
checking, Spyglass - Internet Explorer (which is really a modified
version of SpyGlass Mosaic, BTW), and numerous other vendors.

Strip away all of the 3rd party code from Windows, and how much of the
code that is left is actually Microsoft's? Another point: There's
probably too much interdependency on 3rd-party code to just simply
compile a working system with what you'd have left. You'd need that
code just to make Windows function.

- Donn

by **Perry P** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

>Strip away all of the 3rd party code from Windows, and how much of the
>code that is left is actually Microsoft's?

void bsod(void *ptr_to_hex_junk){
...

Quote:}

Perry

by **Christopher Brow** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Donn Miller would say:

>> There are other issues as well, comments like these will be made public:

>> "/* This should break lotus 123 */"
>> "/* Hack to allow powerpoint to access private bitmaps */"
>> "/* This should break notes */"
>> "/* NSA paid big bucks to this back-door */"
>> "/* netscape engineers are weenies */"
>> "/* This is a big ugly hack, fix it in next version? */"

>Well, I think MS would look for these comments and remove them. But,
>think of how many lines of code of Windows are actually Microsoft's.
>MS can't just release the source code as-is, because a lot of it
>belongs to 3rd-party vendors: Symantec for disk utils and virus
>checking, Spyglass - Internet Explorer (which is really a modified
>version of SpyGlass Mosaic, BTW), and numerous other vendors.

On the other hand, in those cases where MSFT bought out the vendors,
they _do_ own complete rights to the sources...

Quote:>Strip away all of the 3rd party code from Windows, and how much of the
>code that is left is actually Microsoft's? Another point: There's
>probably too much interdependency on 3rd-party code to just simply
>compile a working system with what you'd have left. You'd need that
>code just to make Windows function.

This is precisely why Mozilla has taken two years to get anywhere.
NCC had to rip out Motif, RogueWave, RSA, and other vendors' code
from the code base in order to release just what belonged to NCC.
That left something of a "worthless hulk."

It's not clear at all that there's _all_ that much code from "original
Mozilla" in today's Mozilla; with the drastic loss, and dramatic need
to reimplement, it became obvious that lots of other chunks of it
needed to be _redesigned_, and hence, today's Mozilla is completely
unrecognizable as being related to the one of 1996...
--
Rules of the Evil Overlord #46. "I will not grow a goatee. In the old
days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a
disaffected member of Generation X."
<http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html>

by **Mig Mi** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> It's not clear at all that there's _all_ that much code from "original
> Mozilla" in today's Mozilla; with the drastic loss, and dramatic need
> to reimplement, it became obvious that lots of other chunks of it
> needed to be _redesigned_, and hence, today's Mozilla is completely
> unrecognizable as being related to the one of 1996...

Hmmm.. thats the point of starting from scratch.

by **Donn Mille** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> >Strip away all of the 3rd party code from Windows, and how much of the
> >code that is left is actually Microsoft's?

> void bsod(void *ptr_to_hex_junk){
> ...
> }

if ( user_is_working_on _something important ||
user_is_using_non_MS_Products) {
bsod();
trash_hard_drive();
...
/* Think of some other * stuff to do to clueless user */

Quote:}

- Donn

by **Loren Petri** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

>> There are other issues as well, comments like these will be made public:
>> "/* This should break lotus 123 */"
>> "/* Hack to allow powerpoint to access private bitmaps */"
>> "/* This should break notes */"
>> "/* NSA paid big bucks to this back-door */"
>> "/* netscape engineers are weenies */"
>> "/* This is a big ugly hack, fix it in next version? */"
>Well, I think MS would look for these comments and remove them. ...

Netscape Navigator's code was reportedly similiarly sanitized, in
addition to being stripped of its licensed code.

But in an example better-known to me, Bungie's Marathon 2 source
code had some serial-number code and some library code removed
("cseries"), but the code was not otherwise sanitized, and there was some
profanity here and there, including some of the identifiers in the code.
One wonders if the removed comments had a similar approach to M$.

--
Loren Petrich Happiness is a fast Macintosh

My home page: http://www.petrich.com/home.html

by **Charlie Eber** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

I just wanted to say that it's a total rumor there is
any SOURCE at all!

HA HA HA

Charlie

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