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A silly new app has been doing the rounds this week: Windows 95 as a standalone application. Running on Windows, macOS, and Linux, the Windows 95 "app" combines Electron (a framework for building desktop applications using JavaScript and other Web technology) with an existing x86 emulator written in JavaScript. The emulator can run a bunch of operating systems: for the app, it's preloaded with Windows 95.
This is, of course, software piracy. The developer of the app has no rights to distribute Windows 95 like this, and I'm a little surprised that the app hasn't been yanked from GitHub yet. And for now, the app is just a toy; there's no real reason to run Windows 95 like this, other than the novelty factor of it actually working.
But Windows 95 (and software that runs on or requires Windows 95) was an important piece of computing history. I think a case could be made that it's Microsoft's most important Windows release of all time, and its influence continues to be felt today. Not only was it technically important as an essential stepping stone from the world of 16-bit DOS and Windows 3.x to 32-bit Windows NT, and not only did it introduce a user interface that's largely stayed with us for more than 20 years—Windows 95 was also a major consumer event as people lined up to buy the thing as soon as it was available. A full understanding of the computing landscape today can't really be had without running, using, and understanding Windows 95.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Sunday August 26 2018, @07:11PM (2 children)
And this was the best thing about Windows 95, in that comparison.
There was mention of the best version of Windows - it's not 95, but it's close. 98SE was without any doubt the best version of Windows ever made. And it was essentially Windows 95 SP3 - the final, most polished release of the series.
It was better than XP precisely because it wasn't an OS. It could still be unloaded, there was still a real OS with a user-accessible interface waiting underneath. There was still a way to get it out of the way and get work done.
You can't do that with NT. As sophisticated as it is in some ways (and it brought real improvements under the hood,) it's always been a toy by design. It's like a sleek, powerful motorcycle - with integral training wheels. Yes, they always wanted to get everyone to move to it eventually - but there was real resistance and in the early years of NT they seemed more than happy to pursue a dual product line and continue to maintain a version of DOS that came with Win32 compatbility etc. so that it still had access to their newer applications - without having to give up the old ones completely.
DOS had made them a ton of money, both directly and indirectly, and DOS was something many of us loved even if we loved to hate it. It let us take off the training wheels and get work done in a way that nothing Win32 ever approached.
But there was one longstanding problem with DOS from their point of view - Gary Killdall, by most reckonings the architect and primary author of DOS, had never licensed it to them or been their employee. MS had bought DOS from a hobbyist who had gotten an early sample of the new CPU and managed to hack up a functional version of CP/M to play with while everyone was waiting on DR to wrap a proper release for it. They had then sold this OS to IBM, who were similarly unwilling to wait for DR to wrap it up proper for them. Now, if this were just a matter of matching the publicly known interfaces, it wouldn't have mattered at all (this was before the invention of modern "intellectual property") but from the very beginning they had every reason to think it involved large scale copying instead.
CP/M, though not 'Free Software' was at least 'Software' - that is, licensees got access to source as well as binaries. So they bought what was openly described as 'a quick and dirty cp/m clone' by an author known to have access to the actual CP/M source code and at the time no one cared but even back then a man with the business smarts of Bill Gates probably realized it would bite him in the butt eventually.
This hadn't caught up with them yet when they first started working on NT though, and notice that the early versions of NT were not aimed to replace the DOS line in 'hobbyist' applications - it was mostly aimed at business users, the one area where there had always been some demand for crippled or toy systems - systems that, in theory, would be harder for poorly trained employees to screw up rather than systems that would offer advantages to those who were already using PCs fluently.
NT had little to offer for the latter market, and little appeal beyond 'be the first one on your block.' The first one to struggle with lack of drivers, the first one to come face to face with the reason why software means source when you hit a showstopper bug that you can't possibly fix and the manufacturer doesn't care about. I definitely played with it, but it was a step back from 95 as a workstation, and still inferior to Novell as a server for years to come. And if you didn't mind tinkering, why not tinker with Linux, where you get the actual source code and can fix the odd misplaced semicolon yourself if you have to? NT found basically no traction in the home, and even Microsoft didn't seem to consider that a problem.
But time went on and by early 2000 Killdall's copyrights finally caught up with them. Their lawyers couldn't stall it anymore, they were forced to settle. The terms were confidential but clearly included large back-payments, and were known to also include a source-code access provision to allow Caldera to more easily work around manufactured incompatibilities in the future. It may have also included per-unit royalties going forward. At any rate, by the end of the year Microsoft had terminated the DOS product line and by the end of the year after they had XP on the market. And after 20 years of working to put DOS on every PC, they were now working hard to keep DOS OFF every PC.
They did make a quick attempt to make XP more palatable outside of the office environment before release, but other than porting DirectX and getting some games working they didn't really do much on that front that I recall until the release of powershell.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Nuke on Sunday August 26 2018, @07:59PM (1 child)
Killdall did not write DOS, nor was it written by a hobbyist. The original PC-DOS operating system was written by Tim Paterson while working for Seattle Computer Products [SCP] for their own 8086 CPU board (a micro computer kit component). Microsoft bought DOS from SCP and hired Paterson to adapt it for the IBM PC. They then sold it at a massive profit to IBM and other PC makers. Later, SCP successfully sued Microsoft for misrepresenting the intended use at the time of the sale.
Killdall wrote the rival CP/M system, which was also available for the early IBM PC, but it failed as being priced too high.
http://www.patersontech.com/dos/byte%E2%80%93history.aspx [patersontech.com]
http://www.billgatesmyths.org.uk/dos.html [billgatesmyths.org.uk]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Arik on Sunday August 26 2018, @09:02PM
The hobbyist in question. And yes, he was a hobbyist. Anyone that was competent to port CP/M at the time would have been described as a hobbyist, even if they were also a working professional. And he did indeed describe it as a 'quick and dirty' hack of CP/M for the new processor. And he did indeed have a printout of the CP/M source code available for a starting point.
Since they settled all the exhibits from trial is sealed, but the outcome itself seems a pretty strong indication that large parts of it were copied wholesale in the process.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?