At Tue, 17 Feb 2004 3:13pm +0200, Luchezar Georgiev wrote: > On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 15:32:27 -0600, Jim Hall wrote: > > > We've actually addressed this issue before. Some years ago, the > > source code to MS-DOS was leaked. For a while, I would get about an > > email a week from people (who probably thought they were being > > helpful) asking if I wanted access to the Microsoft code. I have > > always said "no", because having access to the MS-DOS source code > > could compromise my work in FreeDOS. We have a FAQ about the topic, > > here: > > > > http://fd-doc.sourceforge.net/faq/cgi-bin/viewfaq.cgi?faq=General_Information/12 > > Of course you're right, Jim! But may I add two things? Firstly, the > "leaked" MS-DOS 6 source code contains only about 1/3 of the whole thing > - consequently none of its components will build, and secondly, in my > opinion, the harm done by just looking at it is similar to the harm done > by just looking at... pornography (as long as you don't do it ;-) At one > moment you get bored and just stop looking! Yes, the comparison is > exact, because this source code is just a "full pornography" as we say > here! It's full of patches, bug descriptions and workarounds, and so on, > is almost 100% assembler, and is the best example of "spaghetti code" > (i.e. not structured at all) I've ever seen! So, not only it's > impossible to understand, but also one must be crazy to attempt to copy > anything from it - this would be plainly impossible, even if you want do > do it! It's of no real value to anybody, not in the last place because > as Johnson already said, it's obsolete and our code is already much > better in every aspect! So, my advice is - just forget that pile of > trash! > > Lucho > > P.S. I'm glad that the Datalight ROM-DOS code has not leaked [yet]! By > the way, some years ago they were offering it for sale, for just... > $10000 ;-)
A little bit of a BTW here. I've always tried to challenge myself as a programmer, but 99% of the time I've tried, I've gone too far and resigned myself to defeat. One of the things I always wanted to do was write a clone of MS-DOS, just a simple clone (like of 3.3, not 6.22), just for practice. I've been unable to do this myself, so far... I am continually stymied at the disk level. (I did once write a simple file system; I've also implemented a read-only FAT12 filesystem in QuickBasic) I'd like to be able to design it in a way that I can understand it, this is a problem, I can't always understand other people's code like I can understand my own. I've thought of how I would break the OS into pieces. Some of the parts seem rather easy. The BIOS takes care of a lot. But I see the filesystem and cringe -_-; and I have to be able to implement that... I'm going to keep trying. Maybe I'll get it right someday. Worked for Dapple... :P -uso. ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net is sponsored by: Speed Start Your Linux Apps Now. Build and deploy apps & Web services for Linux with a free DVD software kit from IBM. Click Now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1356&alloc_id=3438&op=click _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
