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The Verge is reporting:
Microsoft is releasing the source code for its original Windows File Manager from nearly 28 years ago. While it's a relic from the past, you can still compile the source code Microsoft has released and run the app on Windows 10 today.
The source code is available on GitHub, and is maintained by Microsoft veteran Craig Wittenberg under the MIT license. Wittenberg copied the File Manager code from Windows NT 4 back in 2007, and has been maintaining it before open sourcing it recently. It's a testament to the backward compatibility of Windows itself, especially that this was originally included in Windows more than 20 years ago.
A port of Microsoft's File Manger made its first appearance in OS/2 1.1 and then became the primary file manager in Windows 3.0.
(Score: 3, Funny) by turgid on Tuesday April 10 2018, @04:39PM (6 children)
The first thing that occurred to me when I got to use Windows 3.0 and then 3.1 was that the Apple Mac had done the whole GUI thing better years before, and why couldn't a mighty company such as Microsoft make such a thing? They're still trying. Very trying.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday April 10 2018, @05:19PM (1 child)
Not to mention that Xerox Star/Globalview did it even before the Mac.
Really, all the way from the 1983 Comdex demo to ~1988 Windows 2.x, Windows hardly got much development attention. It was more of a "me too" product. Just something Microsoft could paste up to show that they had a GUI environment. It didn't help that that most of the early 80s competition fell on their faces. Visi On flopped and VisiCorp imploded, Digital Research's GSX and GEM didn't really take off, and serious business users viewed the Macintosh as a toy. It wasn't until IBM decided to go their own way with OS/2 that Microsoft started taking Windows seriously.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday April 11 2018, @11:25AM
Apple sued DRI over GEM on the PC and they had to release a crippled version as a result. GEM found its way into the Atari ST in uncrippled form.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @06:07PM
"why couldn't a mighty company such as Microsoft make such a thing?"
Because there's a VERY big difference between being innovative and reinventing. Guess which Microsoft specializes in? (Simply because they seem to lack the ability to do the other in any meaningful context.)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jimtheowl on Tuesday April 10 2018, @06:11PM
Whenever they make something good, it is almost a given that a new version will be forced down that ruins it, so they may fix it again.
Case in point, whenever I have to use the file managers in the later versions of Windows, I'm always fighting to get the default options to remain set the way I want them.
It would still be nice if they released the source for the Windows 95/98/2000 file manager. Throw in the Visual Studio 6 IDE and I might start to believe that they are getting serious about open source, but it would have meant much more 5 or 10 years ago.
To me it no longer matters.
(Score: 3, Informative) by el_oscuro on Wednesday April 11 2018, @02:07AM
hell, I used to use GEOS [wikipedia.org], the GUI that ran on a C64 - from a floppy disk. *It* was better than Windows (or pretty much anything else today)
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @08:59AM
They have no clue. All they know how to do is copy other people, and even that they're not very good at. Plus they can't decide what to copy, when they finally had a good Windows (Win7), they decided to copy IOS instead, and now they have an OS that's horrible with keyboard and mouse, but still requires regedit to configure, so forget about it on a touch device.