7 ms·

In general, open-source all abandonware. Here's a few examples of non-game old software that would benefit the society if open-sourced: Windows 9x and classic

In general, open-source all abandonware. Here's a few examples of non-game old software that would benefit the society if open-sourced: Windows 9x and classic Mac OS. No one has sold these OSes for 20+ years and they turned out to be evolutionary dead ends. It would make sense to release their sources so people could learn from them and run them on new hardware more easily. Flash Player. Adobe has stated in no uncertain terms that Flash is dead. Is there any good reason why the sources need to stay closed if they aren't going to make any further gains, financial or otherwise, from this product and its ecosystem? I mean the Flash Player plugin and standalone app specifically, not the Flash authoring software — that's still alive under a new name, Adobe Animate. Trident, the Internet Explorer engine. Again, it's dead for good as far as Microsoft is concerned, so why not release its sources for people to learn and hack on? Presto, the Opera engine. This was leaked and of course I hoarded it, but it would be nice to see an official release. Winamp. The company behind it pivoted to some kind of streaming social donation thing. It does not seem interested in maintaining the old Winamp app. Path, the social media thing for "close friends", their mobile apps. The apps were insanely cool, especially at the time of Path's peak around 2013, but the service was shut down a few years ago. Unless they're going to somehow resurrect the service, there's no good reason for the sources for the apps to remain closed. I'd love to take a look at their implementation of real-time photo filters. Thinking of it, it makes more sense for non-game apps than for games to release sources. Old games do sometimes come out as "remasters" for modern platforms. These usually reuse the engine and sometimes some of the assets. Non-game software, on the other hand, when it's dead, it's usually dead for good.

geek_at 3y ago
man I wish they had open sourced OS/2. It could have a linux sized community at this point. Sadly microsoft had put so much of their code in it, that they didn't allow the release (according to my dad who worked for IBM and was even called "Mr. OS/2" because he had sold it so good to companies)
- ttfkam 3y ago
  OS/2 is still in use and under active development, just under a different name. https://hackaday.com/2023/02/16/arcaos-os-2-updated-for-the-modern-world/ https://hackaday.com/2023/02/16/arcaos-os-2-updated-for-the-...
  - mepian 3y ago
    I remember reading somewhere that while the developers of ArcaOS have the rights to continue the development of OS/2, they didn't obtain the source code. So they have to patch their changes into the old OS/2 binaries instead of changing the code.
psychphysic 3y ago
Is there a risk those closed source projects would be sued following the release because they disclosed some forgotten sin? I'm thinking mostly of anti competitive practices from Windows.
- grishka 3y ago
  It's not like this kind of stuff can't be found by reverse engineering. For Windows specifically, the ReactOS team is doing lots of it to document the inner workings of internal Windows APIs so they could reimplement them.
- realitythreek 3y ago
  There’s a bunch of costs to releasing closed source code as open source. Generally they’d have to have a team of developers review it, they’d need their lawyers to review it and any licenses. That every company that had licensed code used would also need to go through their own process. At any time, one of them could say no and the process stops. So you’re basically paying for everyone’s time and possibly to relicense some parts. And im sure I’m missing other parts.
  - xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
    Yep, it's a huge time sink even in the best case scenario, let alone with ancient software encumbered by transfer of ownership through multiple corporate custodians. It's not that unusual for it to not even be wholly owned by a single entity due to licensing requirements.
  - stepupmakeup 3y ago
    It's unfortunate that when a company DOES chose to release old software, the entire revision history is thrown out due to processes like that. In the software world, this probably doesn't matter too much, but video games can go through massive changes during development. But it also depends on factors like if game assets were even stored in version control in the first place.
- qingcharles 3y ago
rafram 3y ago
> Trident, the Internet Explorer engine. Not really dead because it’s still shipped with enterprise Edge for sites that enable IE mode: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode
- hulitu 3y ago
  Also i think that people from Spyglass INC would not be very happy.
- efreak 3y ago
  Doesn't HTA still use Trident also?
catiopatio 3y ago
> classic Mac OS I’d be really surprised if Apple still had the source code and custom tools necessary to actually build the thing.
- Palomides 3y ago
  they released the Lisa OS code (from 1983) recently, I think they still have all the Mac OS code building it may be horrible, but the code would still be very interesting to hobbyists
  - classichasclass 3y ago
    There is a fair bit of third party code in the classic Mac OS, particularly in the extensions and cdevs. The nanokernel and some basic portions of the OS are likely releasable but they'd have to audit all of that.
dahart 3y ago
> Is there any good reason why the sources need to stay closed if they aren't going to make any further gains, financial or otherwise, from this product and its ecosystem? I can think of lots of reasons. From a competitive point of view, you might risk having a big enough resurgence that it eats into the business of your replacement. From a technical point of view, it may reveal parts of the sausage making, or expose technology and libraries that you still use and rely on. From a legal point of view, it could open up multiple kinds of liability. From a support and staffing perspective, it typically takes at least a little time to open source something, if you want to do it well, there’s usually vetting & review by engineers and lawyers, and usually the need for more/better documentation than the internal docs. Think about this from a business perspective- if they predict there’s going to be no financial upside, even indirectly, and there are costs and risks associated with it, then why would they? When companies open-source something, it’s not usually because the code is dead, it’s usually because the people in it are committed to open source and the org agrees to support that cause, or because the company stands to gain valuable attention from the community, and eventually or indirectly, profits. We do have to support and celebrate when companies decide to release code, but we can’t really expect it or complain when they don’t, it just doesn’t make sense to them and they’re not obligated.
- iforgotpassword 3y ago
  I'd guess something big as Windows 9x contains A LOT of licensed third party code which would be a nightmare to get permission for. Try finding five dozen rights holders after thirty years...
  - pizzapill 3y ago
    This is the usual argument you hear when it comes to old Games. It often would take way to long time to "clean" them up from 3rd party contributions/licenses etc. For a OS this is a impossible task.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      Usually the argument goes that it would take time/money to rewrite the parts they don't have rights to, but simply deleting those parts and releasing the (now broken) code would be much better than nothing. Of course this assumes they kept track of who owns what code in the first place. Probably a bad assumption in the case of games particularly.
antegamisou 3y ago
> No one has sold these OSes for 20+ years and they turned out to be evolutionary dead ends. It would make sense to release their sources so people could learn from them and run them on new hardware more easily. Would add SGI's IRIX too!
pdntspa 3y ago
Au contraire, Winamp 5.9.2 released recently and it's the same old player. They are working on a new one that I am somewhat suspicious of, but Winamp 5.9 has been a pleasant surprise.
gibolt 3y ago
Internet Explorer is still very much alive for millions of people. Releasing the source would mean unlocking way more exploits on those people, with no plan to patch.
stepupmakeup 3y ago
Winamp's source actually did leak a couple years ago too ("winamp-cvs")
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
manquer 3y ago
> Is there any good reason why the sources need to stay closed if they aren't going to make any further gains, financial or otherwise, from this product and its ecosystem? Many reasons are there , it takes a lot of effort for a company to open source anything, to name a few - Not get sued for IP infringement if your developer from 20 years back copied something or used GPL code etc - Potentially expose active trade secrets , the program might not be sold , parts the code /algorithms whole modules might still be used in newer applications. - Presence of PII or other sensitive/inflammatory content in comments and code, could be anything from funny(but inappropriate )method names to comments and documentation . - poor boundaries, you could have dependencies which are used by the app which are not possible to also be open sourced. - poor documentation, you simply no longer have all the code or is it time consuming to piece it all together - expose vulnerabilities in your current offerings , code sometimes has way of being reused , you would be surprised how much “dead” code has a way of living on for decades later . - third party agreements, not all your code is “your” code, you may have only licensed it from another vendor.
lelanthran 3y ago
> In general, open-source all abandonware. Here's a few examples of non-game old software that would benefit the society if open-sourced: That's not the heuristic companies use to determine whether or not to release source code. > Windows 9x and classic Mac OS. No one has sold these OSes for 20+ years and they turned out to be evolutionary dead ends. It would make sense to release their sources so people could learn from them and run them on new hardware more easily. The companies would not do that, for the very simply reason being that it would cannibalise their existing offerings if "people could [...] and run them on new hardware more easily." The biggest competitor to Windows 10 was not Linux or Mac, it was Windows 7. The biggest competitor to Windows 12 will be Windows 11.
- grishka 3y ago
  > The biggest competitor to Windows 10 was not Linux or Mac, it was Windows 7. I have to wonder how relevant Microsoft will remain in the long run. There are several projects maturing that allow people to run Windows apps — the one reason people use Windows in the first place — without any Microsoft involvement whatsoever. The fact that Win32 API has barely changed over the last 15 years also helps. Wine compatibility is getting ever better. ReactOS is aiming to reach beta quality "soon".
  - shultays 3y ago
    the one reason people use Windows in the first place The other reason is UX and people's familiarity with it. I tried switching to ubuntu a few times but small inconveniences adds up eventually and at some point I don't see a reason to switch. Windows works just fine and I like its UX (however we will see if that will change with 11), Linux needs to provide a bit more for people like me to switch for their personal computers
    - grishka 3y ago
      Well, ReactOS is a reimplementation of most of Windows, including the shell and the kernel. Anecdotally, I once installed Ubuntu + Wine for someone non-technical who broke several Windows installations by infecting them with ransomware. He used it for like half a year calling it "this strange Windows" because some people don't know what an operating system is. He eventually irreparably broke its file system because apparently he was shutting down his machine by pulling the plug while it was running.
nmz 3y ago
There's still money to be made with abandonware. GOG was buying and reselling dos games via slapping dosbox on it and making it playable.
DropInIn 3y ago
Umm, anything windows can't be open sourced because significant parts are still in use and source access would create serious security issues due to how MS handles legacy components, right?
- grishka 3y ago
  Windows 9x is based on DOS. The last release of that lineage was Windows ME. The only thing modern NT-based Windows has in common with it is many application-level APIs. Everything else is different. There may be some common code, but if that's so important to keep private, fine, strip it. Heck, release just the kernel of 9x, that definitely can't possibly share anything with any commercially-relevant products. > source access would create serious security issues due to how MS handles legacy components, right? Security through obscurity is not real security. It's just delaying the inevitable.
  - DropInIn 3y ago
    You've conflated being able to use legacy apps which require a very specific stack of components with the complete absence of any such components. Additionally you've failed to recognize that where legacy code is maintained Exactly As Is (bugs included) because users (corps and gov mostly) explicitly depend on behaviors remaining exactly as they have been for 20 years, there is effectively zero means/will to fix dangerous problems which are not being actively exploited. And the mantra around obscurity is too often misused and misunderstood: It's not that obscurity is not a form of security it's that its not a meaningful form of security On Its Own. Obscurity is in fact the first line of security. Just like with physical security, the first step is in preventing attackers from knowing it exists at all and Then having security measures to prevent access/theft/etc if they do happen to find what is being protected. Y'know, like safes behind paintings, which are a very real thing....

geek_at 3y ago

man I wish they had open sourced OS/2. It could have a linux sized community at this point. Sadly microsoft had put so much of their code in it, that they didn't allow the release (according to my dad who worked for IBM and was even called "Mr. OS/2" because he had sold it so good to companies)

ttfkam 3y ago
OS/2 is still in use and under active development, just under a different name. https://hackaday.com/2023/02/16/arcaos-os-2-updated-for-the-modern-world/ https://hackaday.com/2023/02/16/arcaos-os-2-updated-for-the-...
- mepian 3y ago
  I remember reading somewhere that while the developers of ArcaOS have the rights to continue the development of OS/2, they didn't obtain the source code. So they have to patch their changes into the old OS/2 binaries instead of changing the code.

psychphysic 3y ago

Is there a risk those closed source projects would be sued following the release because they disclosed some forgotten sin? I'm thinking mostly of anti competitive practices from Windows.

grishka 3y ago
It's not like this kind of stuff can't be found by reverse engineering. For Windows specifically, the ReactOS team is doing lots of it to document the inner workings of internal Windows APIs so they could reimplement them.
realitythreek 3y ago
There’s a bunch of costs to releasing closed source code as open source. Generally they’d have to have a team of developers review it, they’d need their lawyers to review it and any licenses. That every company that had licensed code used would also need to go through their own process. At any time, one of them could say no and the process stops. So you’re basically paying for everyone’s time and possibly to relicense some parts. And im sure I’m missing other parts.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
  Yep, it's a huge time sink even in the best case scenario, let alone with ancient software encumbered by transfer of ownership through multiple corporate custodians. It's not that unusual for it to not even be wholly owned by a single entity due to licensing requirements.
- stepupmakeup 3y ago
  It's unfortunate that when a company DOES chose to release old software, the entire revision history is thrown out due to processes like that. In the software world, this probably doesn't matter too much, but video games can go through massive changes during development. But it also depends on factors like if game assets were even stored in version control in the first place.
qingcharles 3y ago

rafram 3y ago

> Trident, the Internet Explorer engine. Not really dead because it’s still shipped with enterprise Edge for sites that enable IE mode: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode

hulitu 3y ago
Also i think that people from Spyglass INC would not be very happy.
efreak 3y ago
Doesn't HTA still use Trident also?

catiopatio 3y ago

> classic Mac OS I’d be really surprised if Apple still had the source code and custom tools necessary to actually build the thing.

Palomides 3y ago
they released the Lisa OS code (from 1983) recently, I think they still have all the Mac OS code building it may be horrible, but the code would still be very interesting to hobbyists
- classichasclass 3y ago
  There is a fair bit of third party code in the classic Mac OS, particularly in the extensions and cdevs. The nanokernel and some basic portions of the OS are likely releasable but they'd have to audit all of that.

dahart 3y ago

> Is there any good reason why the sources need to stay closed if they aren't going to make any further gains, financial or otherwise, from this product and its ecosystem? I can think of lots of reasons. From a competitive point of view, you might risk having a big enough resurgence that it eats into the business of your replacement. From a technical point of view, it may reveal parts of the sausage making, or expose technology and libraries that you still use and rely on. From a legal point of view, it could open up multiple kinds of liability. From a support and staffing perspective, it typically takes at least a little time to open source something, if you want to do it well, there’s usually vetting & review by engineers and lawyers, and usually the need for more/better documentation than the internal docs. Think about this from a business perspective- if they predict there’s going to be no financial upside, even indirectly, and there are costs and risks associated with it, then why would they? When companies open-source something, it’s not usually because the code is dead, it’s usually because the people in it are committed to open source and the org agrees to support that cause, or because the company stands to gain valuable attention from the community, and eventually or indirectly, profits. We do have to support and celebrate when companies decide to release code, but we can’t really expect it or complain when they don’t, it just doesn’t make sense to them and they’re not obligated.

iforgotpassword 3y ago
I'd guess something big as Windows 9x contains A LOT of licensed third party code which would be a nightmare to get permission for. Try finding five dozen rights holders after thirty years...
- pizzapill 3y ago
  This is the usual argument you hear when it comes to old Games. It often would take way to long time to "clean" them up from 3rd party contributions/licenses etc. For a OS this is a impossible task.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    Usually the argument goes that it would take time/money to rewrite the parts they don't have rights to, but simply deleting those parts and releasing the (now broken) code would be much better than nothing. Of course this assumes they kept track of who owns what code in the first place. Probably a bad assumption in the case of games particularly.

antegamisou 3y ago

> No one has sold these OSes for 20+ years and they turned out to be evolutionary dead ends. It would make sense to release their sources so people could learn from them and run them on new hardware more easily. Would add SGI's IRIX too!

pdntspa 3y ago

Au contraire, Winamp 5.9.2 released recently and it's the same old player. They are working on a new one that I am somewhat suspicious of, but Winamp 5.9 has been a pleasant surprise.

gibolt 3y ago

Internet Explorer is still very much alive for millions of people. Releasing the source would mean unlocking way more exploits on those people, with no plan to patch.

stepupmakeup 3y ago

Winamp's source actually did leak a couple years ago too ("winamp-cvs")

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

manquer 3y ago

> Is there any good reason why the sources need to stay closed if they aren't going to make any further gains, financial or otherwise, from this product and its ecosystem? Many reasons are there , it takes a lot of effort for a company to open source anything, to name a few - Not get sued for IP infringement if your developer from 20 years back copied something or used GPL code etc - Potentially expose active trade secrets , the program might not be sold , parts the code /algorithms whole modules might still be used in newer applications. - Presence of PII or other sensitive/inflammatory content in comments and code, could be anything from funny(but inappropriate )method names to comments and documentation . - poor boundaries, you could have dependencies which are used by the app which are not possible to also be open sourced. - poor documentation, you simply no longer have all the code or is it time consuming to piece it all together - expose vulnerabilities in your current offerings , code sometimes has way of being reused , you would be surprised how much “dead” code has a way of living on for decades later . - third party agreements, not all your code is “your” code, you may have only licensed it from another vendor.

lelanthran 3y ago

> In general, open-source all abandonware. Here's a few examples of non-game old software that would benefit the society if open-sourced: That's not the heuristic companies use to determine whether or not to release source code. > Windows 9x and classic Mac OS. No one has sold these OSes for 20+ years and they turned out to be evolutionary dead ends. It would make sense to release their sources so people could learn from them and run them on new hardware more easily. The companies would not do that, for the very simply reason being that it would cannibalise their existing offerings if "people could [...] and run them on new hardware more easily." The biggest competitor to Windows 10 was not Linux or Mac, it was Windows 7. The biggest competitor to Windows 12 will be Windows 11.

grishka 3y ago
> The biggest competitor to Windows 10 was not Linux or Mac, it was Windows 7. I have to wonder how relevant Microsoft will remain in the long run. There are several projects maturing that allow people to run Windows apps — the one reason people use Windows in the first place — without any Microsoft involvement whatsoever. The fact that Win32 API has barely changed over the last 15 years also helps. Wine compatibility is getting ever better. ReactOS is aiming to reach beta quality "soon".
- shultays 3y ago
  the one reason people use Windows in the first place The other reason is UX and people's familiarity with it. I tried switching to ubuntu a few times but small inconveniences adds up eventually and at some point I don't see a reason to switch. Windows works just fine and I like its UX (however we will see if that will change with 11), Linux needs to provide a bit more for people like me to switch for their personal computers
  - grishka 3y ago
    Well, ReactOS is a reimplementation of most of Windows, including the shell and the kernel. Anecdotally, I once installed Ubuntu + Wine for someone non-technical who broke several Windows installations by infecting them with ransomware. He used it for like half a year calling it "this strange Windows" because some people don't know what an operating system is. He eventually irreparably broke its file system because apparently he was shutting down his machine by pulling the plug while it was running.

nmz 3y ago

There's still money to be made with abandonware. GOG was buying and reselling dos games via slapping dosbox on it and making it playable.

DropInIn 3y ago

Umm, anything windows can't be open sourced because significant parts are still in use and source access would create serious security issues due to how MS handles legacy components, right?

grishka 3y ago
Windows 9x is based on DOS. The last release of that lineage was Windows ME. The only thing modern NT-based Windows has in common with it is many application-level APIs. Everything else is different. There may be some common code, but if that's so important to keep private, fine, strip it. Heck, release just the kernel of 9x, that definitely can't possibly share anything with any commercially-relevant products. > source access would create serious security issues due to how MS handles legacy components, right? Security through obscurity is not real security. It's just delaying the inevitable.
- DropInIn 3y ago
  You've conflated being able to use legacy apps which require a very specific stack of components with the complete absence of any such components. Additionally you've failed to recognize that where legacy code is maintained Exactly As Is (bugs included) because users (corps and gov mostly) explicitly depend on behaviors remaining exactly as they have been for 20 years, there is effectively zero means/will to fix dangerous problems which are not being actively exploited. And the mantra around obscurity is too often misused and misunderstood: It's not that obscurity is not a form of security it's that its not a meaningful form of security On Its Own. Obscurity is in fact the first line of security. Just like with physical security, the first step is in preventing attackers from knowing it exists at all and Then having security measures to prevent access/theft/etc if they do happen to find what is being protected. Y'know, like safes behind paintings, which are a very real thing....