MS To Finally End OEM Licensing For Windows 3.11 388
halfEvilTech writes with an excerpt from Ars Technica's story on the sputtering out of Windows for Workgroups 3.11: "Believe it or not, that headline is not a typo. John Coyne, Systems Engineer in the OEM Embedded Devices group at Microsoft, has posted a quick blog entry that broke the bad news: as of November 1, 2008, Microsoft will no longer allow OEMs to license Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the embedded channel. That's exactly 15 years after it shipped in November 1993! Poor OEMs have so much to put up with these days; first Windows XP, and now this!"
Anonymous Coward (Score:3, Funny)
This news doesn't bode well for Windows 95...
I don't believe it (Score:5, Funny)
A slashdot article without a typo? Can't half that!
But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Funny)
Of course they should be open sourced. Ideally all four of the software freedoms [gnu.org] should be enshrined in law.
Re:Its not a joke, it can be serious (Score:5, Funny)
Also goes to show you that old isn't always 'bad'.
It's a good rule of thumb, though. I just found a cabbage in the fridge that I think we bought three months ago.
OMG, the stench!
Re:Why not open source 3.1/3.11 (Score:5, Funny)
Why dont they release the source code to the community?
Fear of embarrassment? :)
Re:Why not open source 3.1/3.11 (Score:5, Funny)
Probably because the majority of Vista's architecture is based on 3.11.
in 1993 & in 2008 (Score:5, Funny)
Only the most hardcore used "Windows NT",
President Bush's popularity sank to new lows,
Afghanistan's ongoing collapse continued to somehow worsen,
A series of bomb blasts killed scores of people in India,
RMS insisted that Linux be called GNU/Linux and nobody cared,
MTV sucked ass,
The number of Americans incarcerated increased by between 300,000 and 700,000 a year...
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Funny)
So I'm not allowed to use Open Office to track my human trafficking shipments?
Re:Ahh the memories (Score:5, Funny)
hey, what's the problem with lantastic ? i earned my living out of it for a bunch of years. i liked the way the DOS boxes bleeped everytime the coax cable was open.
bleep! bleep! bleep! bleep!
and there i went with a 50 Ohm terminator to find the faulty node...
ahhh, the good old times.
now get of my lawn, punk.
Re:in 1993 & in 2008 (Score:3, Funny)
make that last one "every five years"
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Funny)
Why are you in the first place? Office has some nice built in templates just for that.
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Funny)
So I'm not allowed to use Open Office to track my human trafficking shipments?
I think IBM handles a lot of contracts in that market.
Now, now... (Score:5, Funny)
Just because someone is using crappy hardware, it doesn't give you the right to use language like *that*.
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Ahh the memories (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Like it or not (Score:3, Funny)
I bet most of us can remember the day you loaded 3.11.... and said "you gotta be kidding me"!
I was a Mac user, so I was more like "Thank god I don't have to run WordPerfect anymore!"
Re:Why not open source 3.1/3.11 (Score:5, Funny)
Probably because the majority of Vista's architecture is based on 3.11.
Only the parts that work
Re:Ahh the memories (Score:3, Funny)
Should we all get off your lawn? :-)
Re:Abandonware (Score:2, Funny)
I remember using A/UX as well. Those days were NOT as good as you remember them being.
Re:Abandonware (Score:3, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_UNIX-HATERS_Handbook [wikipedia.org]
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Funny)