In the name of science, Microsoft makes MS-DOS and Word source code public

According to Microsoft, in 1980, IBM approached the company to work on a project codenamed “Chess”. Microsoft then licenced an operating system from Seattle Computer Products which would become the foundation for PC-DOS and MS-DOS.

NEW DELHI: Microsoft, a company that loves to keep its software secrets locked and hidden, has made source code of early versions of MS-DOS and MS Word available to public. The move is part of the company's collaboration with Computer History Museum, which is trying to get hold of software bits and programs that played iconic role in the growth of computers.

"MS-DOS and Word for Windows built the foundation for Microsoft's success in the technology industry," said Roy Levin, distinguished engineer and managing director, Microsoft Research. "By contributing these source codes to the Computer History Museum archives, Microsoft is making these historic systems from the early era of personal computing available to the community for historical and technical scholarship."

However, this doesn't mean Microsoft is releasing the source code of the latest versions of MS-DOS and Word. Microsoft is very specific that it is giving away only "MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0 and Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a" and that too only "to help future generations of technologists better understand the roots of personal computing".

"Version 1.1 fits an entire operating system - limited as it was - into only 12K bytes of memory, which is tiny compared to today's software," said Len Shustek, chairman of Computer History Museum.

According to Microsoft, in 1980, IBM approached the company to work on a project codenamed "Chess". Microsoft then licenced an operating system from Seattle Computer Products which would become the foundation for PC-DOS and MS-DOS.

The last version of MS-DOS was released in 2000. It is no longer available on consumer PCs but some companies or organizations running legacy programs still use it. Command Prompt, which is still part of Windows, looks like MS-DOS. But it is actually not an OS even though many users call it MS-DOS.

Even a controlled release of source code is a surprise move from Microsoft, which is known for keeping the code related to its software very secret.

Bill Gates, even though he was part of the hobbyist culture that gave birth to personal computers in 1970s, always held strong views against making the source code or a program available to public. Even in 1976, when many hobbyist ripped off his BASIC program and used it without buying it, he wrote a strongly-worded letter against the practice. "Most directly, the thing you do is theft," Gates wrote in his famous letter titled, "An Open Letter To Hobbyists".

If MS-DOS in early 1980s helped Microsoft take on the Apple, which technically had a better operating system, in the personal computer market, MS Word in the late 1980s helped the company win the enterprise market.

"The 1989 release of Word for Windows became a blockbuster for the company and within four years it was generating over half the revenue of the worldwide word-processing market. Word for Windows was a remarkable engineering and marketing achievement, and we are happy to provide its source code to the museum," Levin wrote on the official Microsoft blog
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