4 ms·

Just my two cents: but this seems like an extremely uphill battle without an internal champion. I'd guess with how old this is and how many hands it has passed

by bragr 5y ago

Just my two cents: but this seems like an extremely uphill battle without an internal champion. I'd guess with how old this is and how many hands it has passed through, the legal team would struggle to put together the chain of agreements and paperwork to prove they have the sufficient rights to open source it. I don't seem them touching this without doing that first which makes it seem pretty much like a non-starter. I'd focus on trying to track down potential high ranking champions if you want to have any shot.

andrewstuart 5y ago
Step one is to find someone who even knows that the source code still exists - it may well be lost forever. If someone turns up saying "yes I have a copy of FlexOS/386" then I can take next steps which is to work out who to talk to about open sourcing it. In my opinion alot of senior tech people like CTO's and CEO's are interested in things like computer history and the software community. A company that open sources its defunct software at the request of the community is showing itself to be a good corporate citizen - they get to do a press release that might catch the attention of some good engineers who consider taking a job with them. Anything's possible. Worst case is someone finds the software and the company that owns it says "no" - nothing ventured, nothing lost.
- dfawcus 5y ago
  The distribution came in two parts when I worked with it: APT - The binaries and SDK. SBK - The drivers (source code), .obj and .lib files for the system. There was significant driver source code in the latter, and the object files had (codeview) debug symbols included. It is possible to reverse engineer the latter files in to something approximating the C source, then rebuild individual "Resource Managers" - e.g. the PIPE/SM RM. I know one could probably find the APT & SBK for 2.2, 2.34 (and 2.4 Beta), since a company I used to work for had them, along with the File System (Disk resource manager) source. The 2.4 Beta was something Novell distributed shortly before they handed the system off to the next owner. The other parts of the system are not too complex, and could probably be reverse engineered from the objects with say 1 man year's work. Now having rights / permission to do so, and redistribute the result is a different matter.
pm215 5y ago
Yes; if you read the introduction to the version of the "Lions Book" which was republished in the 1990s with the 6th Edition UNIX source code, you can see that the only reason it happened was that the executives in charge of the company who owned the UNIX copyrights/trademarks at the time (SCO before they went evil) were enthusiastic about the project and pushed it through the legal department, and that similarly Dennis Ritchie had acted as the internal champion within AT&T to get the OK from their lawyers.

by bragr 5y ago

andrewstuart 5y ago

Step one is to find someone who even knows that the source code still exists - it may well be lost forever. If someone turns up saying "yes I have a copy of FlexOS/386" then I can take next steps which is to work out who to talk to about open sourcing it. In my opinion alot of senior tech people like CTO's and CEO's are interested in things like computer history and the software community. A company that open sources its defunct software at the request of the community is showing itself to be a good corporate citizen - they get to do a press release that might catch the attention of some good engineers who consider taking a job with them. Anything's possible. Worst case is someone finds the software and the company that owns it says "no" - nothing ventured, nothing lost.

dfawcus 5y ago
The distribution came in two parts when I worked with it: APT - The binaries and SDK. SBK - The drivers (source code), .obj and .lib files for the system. There was significant driver source code in the latter, and the object files had (codeview) debug symbols included. It is possible to reverse engineer the latter files in to something approximating the C source, then rebuild individual "Resource Managers" - e.g. the PIPE/SM RM. I know one could probably find the APT & SBK for 2.2, 2.34 (and 2.4 Beta), since a company I used to work for had them, along with the File System (Disk resource manager) source. The 2.4 Beta was something Novell distributed shortly before they handed the system off to the next owner. The other parts of the system are not too complex, and could probably be reverse engineered from the objects with say 1 man year's work. Now having rights / permission to do so, and redistribute the result is a different matter.

pm215 5y ago

Yes; if you read the introduction to the version of the "Lions Book" which was republished in the 1990s with the 6th Edition UNIX source code, you can see that the only reason it happened was that the executives in charge of the company who owned the UNIX copyrights/trademarks at the time (SCO before they went evil) were enthusiastic about the project and pushed it through the legal department, and that similarly Dennis Ritchie had acted as the internal champion within AT&T to get the OK from their lawyers.