MSWord (for Windows 1.1) source code released free

[Darren Dirt]

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2014/03/25/microsoft-makes-source-code-for-ms-dos-and-word-for-windows-available-to-public.aspx

http://www.computerhistory.org/press/ms-source-code.html
http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/microsoft-word-for-windows-1-1a-source-code/

Just you gotta promise no commercial use.

The 7 MB zip file contains 1021 files in 33 folders. In the root directory there is a "readme" file that briefly explains the rest of the contents. Most of it is source code in C, but there are also text documents, x86 assembler-language source files, executable tools, batch files, and more...

...a "small program" but it had some sophisticated features, including support for style sheets, multiple windows, footnotes, mail-merge, undo, and the proportional fonts that the newly emerging laser printers would be able to use. Microsoft founder and president Bill Gates was impressed. "One thing that just blew Bill away was an optimization of the display speed. We actually formatted as you typed. Every time you inserted one character, the screen would update to show exactly what was going to be printed."

Is this on-par with the DOOM source code being released? Will this trigger the development of a bunch of cool apps that otherwise would be just un-developed ideas? (Or will it encourage bloatware* )


*definitely kidding, because this was the FIRST version of Word, a smart guy named Charles was bringing new development concepts TO Microsoft, instead of the later versions that would of course suffer from a culture of "just get it out the door, no time to make it work properly" etc. that resulted in bloat upon bloat...

"Simonyi introduced to Microsoft the techniques of object-oriented programming that he had learned at Xerox. He developed the Hungarian notation convention for naming variables..."
Yeah, a pretty smart guy. And ambitious:
"Now he wants to reprogram software"
"He is obsessed with a project that he has pursued for a decade and a half, and that four years ago carried him right out of Microsoft?s doors ... he is haunted by the thought of what programmers must contend with each time they sit down to code. He asks, Why is it so hard to create good software?"
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/407091/anything-you-can-do-i-can-do-meta/