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Ask HN: Which closed-source software would you most like to see the code for?
I would choose Winamp 2 as the early versions of Winamp is exactly how I think software should be, and I also have great memories with it.
- saimiam 9y agoOff topic but it's heartening to me that after 3 hours, this thread has no replies. To me, this could be because of two reasons - 1. People believe most of their favorite softwares are already open source OR 2. They don't think highly enough of closed source softwares to want to know their internals
- wmil 9y agoI think it's more that there's plenty of interesting source code available to read through already and I personally have trouble thinking of a piece of software that I could go through in a reasonable time frame.
- HaoZeke 9y agoMatlab of course.
- violinist 9y agoVisual studio. I've heard that its design is beautiful and I think I'd learn a lot reading it.
- tjalfi 9y agoSome Visual Studio support libraries are available on Github. https://github.com/Microsoft/vs-validation https://github.com/Microsoft/vs-mef https://github.com/Microsoft/vs-threading
- futhey 9y agoEarly versions of Google would be interesting to see (would be interesting to look at parts of a version of the engine that are still small enough to reason about).
- citrusui 9y agoI'd have to second this. Especially how they manage to support nearly every browser in existence by serving a (sometimes vastly) different Google homepage based on the user-agent.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago- US air traffic control software - Software that drives the NYSE and NASDAQ exchanges - SpaceX Dragon vehicle controller (primarily what calculates the boostback trajectory on the fly) EDIT: Honorable mention: The Knight Capital codebase [1] Disclaimer: Please lawd don't let this put my on a watch list. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-08-02/knight-shows-how-to-lose-440-million-in-30-minutes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-08-02/knight-sh...
- tdb7893 9y agoI met someone who worked on air traffic control software and I think it would be scary to see.
- whyagaindavid 9y agoXP. Would love if somebody continued development in open way!
- thomastjeffery 9y agoTo me, this is the wrong question. I don't want software to be open source so I can read it. I want my software to be free (as in liberty), so I can decide how to use it, rather than it use me.
- zbuf 9y agoRenoise, music production software. I've found it to be exceptionally stable and responsive; changes propagate with live feedback right throughout the GUI. I'd really like to see if its qualities are the result of great software design, or just brute force and hammering away at it until the bugs are gone. It strikes me it would be hard to achieve with the latter. If the architecture is good, whether it is a textbook use of C++ with objects, inheritance and templates, or something more modest/bespoke.
- jazztoken 9y agoDwarf fortress. Incredibly complicated simulation and procgen code written by a guy who admits to having very little engineering knowledge.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y agoI think he has spoken about his development methodology and codebase in interviews. From what I remember based on his description it would horrify any professional engineer who saw it but it seems to work for him. Here is the AMA where he briefly touches on some of his implementations:https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1avszc/im_tarn_adams_of_bay_12_games_cocreator_of_dwarf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1avszc/im_tarn_adams_...
- btschaegg 9y agoThis is the reason DF sprang to mind for me, too. From what I gather, tools like Dwarf Therapist work by directly manipulating the game's memory. If it were open source, I'm sure there would be some halfway sane plugin system by now. Also, having the source code would mean that one could compile it for ARM devices...
- zbuf 9y agoThe code that runs my dad's pacemaker. Whether he (or I) would sleep at night after seeing it...
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y agoBayonetta or thr Ai code from F. E. A. R.
- btschaegg 9y agoI don't know about the code, but the basic model behind F.E.A.R's AI has been explained in a couple of presentations, afaik. Cf: http://web.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/gdc2006_orkin_jeff_fear.pdf http://web.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/gdc2006_orkin_jeff_fear.pdf
- soulchild37 9y agoRoller Coaster Tycoon, to this date it still amaze me that Chris Sawyer wrote almost the whole game using Assembly
- nerdponx 9y agoThat blows my mind. Old-school game development is fascinating.
- Artlav 9y agoThe one that runs the NSA's servers policing the internet.
- Tyrannosaur 9y agoThe engine behind Opera up until 2013: Presto. I understand why they moved to Blink, but I liked Presto so much better... The current Opera has the same memory issues Chrome does, and it is nowhere close to feature parity as the 2012 version. An open source release would let the community help keep up development
- ReligiousFlames 9y agoVMware Fusion userland & kexts to see how they intercept IOKit USB connections.
- axonic 9y agoThe firmware from the international version of the Samsung Galaxy S3 which has unexplainable access to storage devices and such while the phone is powered down. I wanna know what was really going on there...
- demarq 9y agoSublime text!! I use it all the time
- fuzzycapacitor 9y agoThe firmware for the radio on my phone. Ideally I'd like it to be free software, not merely readable.
- smilesnd 9y agoAll the video games blizzard makes specially Starcraft 2 and Overwatch. They just seem to not struggle in lag department as other games. And for the massive world World of Warcraft it keeps state amazingly compare to other mmorpg's. Plus the networking seems to be a step above most.
- ahoka 9y agoWOW is dead simple TCP with smoke and mirrors.
- giobox 9y agoIs it though? https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/300479 https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/300479 My understanding is the best video game netcode tends to rely upon UDP for gameplay, TCP introduces way too much overhead to keep gameplay at its smoothest: far better to use UDP and get latest player data as fast as possible, lost packets be damned.
- jetti 9y agoI would really be interested in seeing the source for IDA Pro. I would love to see how it interacts with each operating system.