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!"
Abandonware (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Abandonware (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Not if you use that software to remove the rights of others.
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Funny)
So I'm not allowed to use Open Office to track my human trafficking shipments?
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)
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.
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Informative)
Well, they have done in the past. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright doesn't prevent you from writing your own software. Patents do but that's another thing and patents won't affect the end-user anyway.
But I have two questions about this public domaining / open sourcing thingy.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Most companies don't pay developers on number of sales. The developers get a fixed salary and it doesn't matter weather one or a million copies were sold.
I'm sure the justification for those fixed salaries depend on there being more than just one copy (or several dozen hundred copies) sold per developer. Money just doesn't materialize out of nothing, even without any currencies based on a precious metal standard.
2. Yes. Being an early adopter doesn't make it "unfair" that future users get it for a lower price or free. The original Doom games cost $40 each, now you can get all of them on a single CD for $10.
But they still cost something. And that's the company itself doing those price reductions. Some games are simply not sold anymore at any price... either they're being held by an IP-only company with no interest of actually making it available or they
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortune forbid that anyone take responsibility and think clearly these days. How would we ever hold elections?
Wake up and smell the Blue (Score:3, Interesting)
Well IBM, of course, doesn't really embrace the four "freedoms". When it purchased Rational, it would no longer sell a license Visual Test and it didn't make it open source either.
Why? Because Visual Test was a low-cost alternative to other Rational testing applications.
Wake up and smell the Blue. The only IP that IBM has/will made/make open source, is the commodity stuff or stuff they can't make any money on.
Re:Wake up and smell the Blue (Score:4, Insightful)
IBM is a great test to determine if someone knows anything about IT beyond what they read on Slashdot.
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't agree.
I have a problem with the idea of software becoming open sourced just because the users want it. If you knowingly agree to be bound by a license, you should honor that agreement unless the licensor acts in an unconscionable way, and then your own actions should only be sufficient to address the specific issue. Everybody knows vendors stop supporting old software. You can't complain if the vendor gives you a couple years to upgrade and then pulls support, because you bought the license to use the software knowing this could happen.
This is important. This is why businesses and individuals should use open source software wherever possible: in order to control their future. Much of the open source software I use is because I don't like the license restrictions of the proprietary alternative.
People and organizations should support open source and free software rather than make deals with proprietary vendor then renege on them. And if people should be so cavalier with licenses, then the same applies to free licenses as well.
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire concept of intellectual property (by which I include both patents and copyrights) exists precisely because "users want it" - ie, We-The-People grant the creator a limited monopoly to encourage that entity to do their thing.
Without the "limited" part of that, they, not the users, have broken their end of the bargain.
By explicitly no longer allowing us to license WFW311 (or releasing it into the wild for free), Microsoft has done no less than exploited our beneficence - They've gotten their cash, now they want to take our shared cultural resource away from the very society that allowed them to gain by it.
Unacceptible.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now this, I must say, is an excellent point. It may not be enough to put WFW in the public domain because people want it, but because that's part of the copyright deal. An individual of course can agree to any terms he wants, but society as a whole ought not be bound by such private agreements.
I'd make two provisos to this, however. First, "open source" or "free" software isn't the same thing as software that
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
I would argue that any license that restricts the 4 fundamental software freedoms is unconscionable.
But your argument would be a pretty weak one, unless you were forced to accept the license. There is very little software you can't live without, and these days there are free alternative to almost everything. You might prefer Windows to Linux, but that's no excuse to obtain Windows under false pretenses.
I'd bet even RMS, who thinks proprietary licensing is evil, isn't going to run an unlicensed copy of Windows in QEMU just so he can test software on it. This is the kind of thing programmers rationalize doing all the time; they're doing Microsoft a favor. Maybe Microsoft secretly agree with them. But the more strongly you believe in the principle, the more up front you should be, even if it becomes confrontational. It's not civil disobedience if you do it in secret.
Some contracts are unconscionable because the nature of the terms were misrepresented to a party that could not be expected to understand them. There was a recent case in the news of a financial advisor who convinced a 90 year old to take money out of the annuity on which she was living and put it into an annuity that matured in sixty years. That's unconscionable. If you license proprietary software, you know darned well you aren't allowed to install it on more than one machine, so you shouldn't agree to that if you think it's wrong.
Some contracts are unconscionable because they are so bad for society they are repugnant. You can't sell your organs, or agree to become an indentured servant. Perhaps you think proprietary software licenses fall into this category. Then don't agree. It's at least as unconscionable for you to offer your kidney for sale to somebody on dialysis with no intention of following through than it is for that person to offer money for it.
It's unconscionable for you to agree to an unconscionable agreement with no intention of following through. It is not only dishonest, it encourages the very things you are supposedly against. If it weren't for "piracy" in the 80s and early 90s, Microsoft would never have become as powerful as it did.
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like all software to be FOSS, but I don't think it should be law.
I do think that source must be published and on file in the Library of Congress in order to receive copyright protection, though. Source must be published so that we can properly study and be enriched by the work. Software is an odd case that the founders could have never foreseen. Really what use is there of the Windows 1.0 binaries when the source is gone? It'd be like trying to read a book without the words, yet the book still being useful. Published source is fundamental to the progress of science and useful arts.
I don't accept is copyright protection on top of patent protection on top of trade secret protection with an EULA thrown in to cover all the bases.
If any proprietary vendor thinks publishing the source is a bad deal, they can always use contract law to keep their customers from copying purchased software. And I would have no problem with that so long as it was a real contract, not a click-thru "contract".
In the end, copyright is supposed to benefit society, not authors of creative works.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And then we get to the term length of copyright. Windows 1.0 is public domain in 2080. Do you think anyone will even have such a binary laying around and would it be useful for 2080 technology?
Having just the binary is not useful for using Windows 1.0 as a base for further works. I don't need the script of a public domain movie nor do I need the sheet music of a public domain song to create a work based on those works. I do need the source code to a piece of software in order to do make anything other t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted.
Although, I don't think click-wrap licenses should be contracts since they are inherently one-sided and no good-faith negotiation can occur.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, even if the software becomes public domain -- which might be a good idea -- that's not really the biggest problem users have. The biggest problem is getting support.
It's important not to confusing public domain and free software. Free software includes access to source code and any trade secret or other IP embodied in that source code. Chances are you aren't so much concerned about copying your abandonware to different hardware, as keeping it running, if necessary on hardware that didn't exist bac
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
Discontinued products should be made available consistent with the spirit of the
original intent of US Copyright and the actual relevant Constitutional language.
Anything that patented is already "protected" in terms of "personal private property".
Further obfuscation simply isn't necessary. Furthermore, it's entirely moot since
anything patented has to be disclosed anyways (there are no secrets involved).
There may be complications in using the source but that's a situation that exists
already with Free Software.
If it's not worth the author keeping for sale anymore then it should quickly enter
the public domain. Abandonware should quickly go PD across the board.
It's really the only way to make quasi-perpetual copyright not stiffle new creators.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I could argue that licenses like the GPL allow for more rights than are granted under copyright law.
I'd use this fact by saying that longer terms on licenses that grant MORE rights to everybody would be justified in "promoting the sciences and arts". After all, all derivative works (which are expressly allowed, unlike copyright) must be under the same terms, thus promoting arts and sciences.
More restrictive licenses associated to copyrights should have less time because they benefit fewer people.
I
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to argue Law, this isn't the place. That would be Groklaw. That aside...
I was inquiring about the purpose of copyright and how it is supposed to encourage the sciences and the arts.
---The only thing wrong with copyright law is it's time limits a work gets protection for. The original intention was for a creator to have a limited time when he controls the work. That time is now far too long. You should be protesting that, not the foundations of the law because it's actually a good and appropriate
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't speak for clang_jangle, but I believe that software should be required to ship with buildable source if it is to qualify for copyright protection. It would be the software/copyright analogue of the disclosure required for patents. It would go some way to mitigating the problems caused by copyright as it is applied to software, abandonware being one of them.
Buildable source always? (Score:2)
I believe that software should be required to ship with buildable source if it is to qualify for copyright protection.
How would you build, say, a Wii game from source?
Lockout chip (Score:3, Informative)
Build it on a computer, burn to cd/dvd, done?
The Wii SDK with which retail games are built is not public. Nor is Nintendo's digital signing key for executables that run on retail Wii consoles.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Informative)
well I guess that means that windows 3.11 has 5 years before all the patents expire if the gif patent is anything to go by.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format [wikipedia.org]
That still seems like too long but thats the deal with patents.
I thought the exclusivity granted by a patent had an expiry date and one that should be enforced.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Some of us feel the same about current software, and act accordingly.
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
8.0 is when they started charging for the OS.
No, it was System 7 when they started charging for the OS. 7.1 (aka "System 7 Pro") also cost, as did 7.5 and 7.6. Only the 7.5.x and 7.6.x updates were free.
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Informative)
The logic behind the decision was that MacOS updates were free in the early years (until 7.1) and many users thought there was a implied promise there. So, 7.5.3 was more of a sop to owners of 68K Macs to allow them to get up to speed with modern networking and so on. Everyone who bought a PowerMac was already in the era when the OS revisions cost money.
MacOS 9 was bundled with OS X until 10.3, IIRC.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think basically because new software is very rarely a revolution and very often an evolution. If XP became public domain for example, a large portion of Vista goes public with it by relation. It only takes a few geeks to fill in the blanks and release the patches and everyone could have a 'roll your own' Windows that would probably be better than Microsoft has to offer.
Also, there is the obvious case where thousands of geeks grep the code looking for amusing sections and potential embarrassment for the c
Re: (Score:2)
I think the main concern is that of royalties to other companies.
Windows code includes the use of code licensed from various parties. MS can only release what they own as PD. You'd still need to pay a license to "whoever else" unless they also released the licensed code as PD.
Layne
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I would applaud that, and not just for software. Any out of print book, album, movie; anything that can be given copyright protection should enter the public domain if it is out of print.
Too bad we have the best legislators that money can buy.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is there is no reasonable definition of Abandonware. Look at an old 1980s arcade game. It's 25+ years since someone made the unit. But there is likely 1. a thriving used market. 2. the current copyright holder for the ROM might want to make some money off selling it as part of an emulation package. This happens all the time, especially now that "retro" sells. All the current game console seems to have a "collection" or "anthology" with a bunch of old games on it. Those have to be licensed and someone is making money off selling those old Midway, Sega, Namco, Taito, etc games.
One issue worth bringing up is that computer software generally doesn't have much aftermarket support. Especially for things like Windows which have a license that is usually non-transferable. Selling your used XP discs seems to be (almost) as illegal as making a copy to install on another computer. Seems strange to me. (I think if you want to call it "stealing" you should at least require that all of it be fully transferable and have no restrictions over physical property).
Of course it is always possible for congress to make a law that would shorten copyrights for software, and thus make abandonware possible. Amend the law so that it automatically expires after 10 year of your last publish date would be reasonable way to do abandonware. But still have it expire if it exceed some time from the date of creation like it currently does (what is it now, like 10,000 years? :)
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me it would be a fair enough rule that software with a sizeable installed base that is abandoned by its creators should be opened to the community, so it can live on or die on its own merits.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree somewhat with this idea - though perhaps more with the specifics added to it by others, than your original idea quoted here.
First, how do we define "abandoned" in this case. The best hard line I can think of off-hand is "when official support is discontinued". But if that is where the line would be drawn, it puts software developers/publishers in a very difficult position. Their own older software because their biggest enemy and competition, like WinXP vs. Vista, except to a much greater extent. For an example, let's bring Win2K into the mix. If Win2K was now legally free to obtain and use because of support being discontinued, how many customers would have purchased XP? And more, how many would have purchased Vista? For the most part Win2K can do all the essential functions that either of the newer versions can do, and with a lot less bloat and overhead to boot. Many users still prefer Win2K, even at an equal price point. So with such an "abandonware is free" rule, now the software company has to tread a very careful path, so as to make their next version just enough better to entice users to switch from the old version, but yet not so good as to make a better version unfeasible. Service packs and major patches would become history; such updates would have to become a new pay-for version of the product. Otherwise, the only option is to keep supporting old versions of software merely so it doesn't become "abandonware" (and therefore free). Even worse would be if the hard line for becoming abandonware is whether or not the product is still sold by the publisher. Then they would not only be locked into perpetually providing support, but also keeping the old product available for sale to compete with the newer versions.
I think the real issues here that need to be addressed are software patents and ridiculous copyright durations. If those get properly fixed, abandonware would become free by default at an appropriate time.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember A/UX on a big IIfx with a 21" Radius behemoth on top. The IIfx case was dangerously close to structural failure.
But that was _the_ Unix workstation to have.
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Interesting)
BTW, is A/UX considered abandonware? I would love to load it on one of my ancient Macs.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_UNIX-HATERS_Handbook [wikipedia.org]
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!
Re: (Score:2)
But... (Score:5, Funny)
Ahh the memories (Score:5, Interesting)
I recall when the original WfW packs hit the stores many years ago (was it CompUSA?). Software + NIC, IIRC.
At the time, I was running LANtastic, a terrible networking package. It was cheap, and handled my multinode BBS fairly well, but it was REALLY proprietary and sometimes had no reason to crash but did.
I sold my multinode BBS about that time when I first noticed WfW. Since I was a bit flush with cash after selling the old BBS, I decided to purchase a WfW "starter pack" of some sort. A few hours later, and it was up and running on my now-smaller home network.
At the time I was working for a Novell installation company, and I detested Novell's interface. WfW was significantly better, even though it wasn't as geek-friendly as Novell. I was not very *nix concerned at the time, either, but at that point I had over 9 years of PC experience.
For me, WfW really beat down what my old standards were. LANtastic was out. DESQview was a dying application. Novell was too expensive for the small networks, and too hard to administer for the basic admins at the clients I was handling at the time.
I recall clearly saying "This is going to sweep the PC world." And it did. It was the beginning of a much more profitable venture for me, personally, and provided the basis for many jobs of the geeks who circle at /.
So RIP WfW. It was nice knowing you.
Re: (Score:2)
I recall when the original WfW packs hit the stores many years ago (was it CompUSA?). Software + NIC, IIRC.
It would have been SoftWarehouse at the time.
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:Ahh the memories (Score:4, Interesting)
Good post. I had a similar experience with Lantastic, a BBS, and then moving on to WfW and what I called naively at the time, "Internet Multitasking" using the Trumpet WinSock. "Oh boy I can FTP and use Mosaic at the *same* time!"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Should we all get off your lawn? :-)
Re:Ahh the memories (Score:5, Informative)
nobody used networks to make a multinode bbs you god damned liar
Since you're an AC, it's not worth responding to YOU, but maybe as a lesson to those who don't recall the wonderful BBS days, here's a recap:
I ran two multinode BBSes concurrently as I tested various applications. Up until the age of 17, I made fairly decent money with my multinode BBS (primary) which ran a hacked version of Telegard called Renegade. Renegade ran multinodes either under DESQview or via a wired network. At the same time, I purchased the ultra-expensive but amazing multi-threaded BBS application called MajorBBS, which ran as a compiled solution (doors and other add-ons were either compiled into the runtime EXE, or eventually were DLLs that were called by the runtime EXE). MajorBBS did NOT need a network or DESQview for multinodes, but supported them internally in its wicked-fast C coding.
The problem with MajorBBS was the need for expensive multicomm cards. I believe I paid well over $2000 at the time for a 16-port serial adapter. This let me attach all the modems I needed. The other downside for MajorBBS is that doors (online games) were coded only by professional companies, and they cost a ton of cash. Renegade was DOS based and used a DOS exec command to run external doors, so amateur coders could, and did, write decent games. Some were even multinode using text files to pass data between the various PCs or DESQview "nodes." This was slower, but worked fine. I remember the latency in the chatroom at Renegade to being over 1 second, until we discovered that you could run a RAM drive and put the temp files there. This sped it up signficantly.
LANtastic was the de facto standard for multinode BBS operations that used more than one PC. I prefered this route because the processors at the time were used less in a heavy-intensity BBS. I had a ton of downloads, a ton of message boards (FIDOnet), and a ton of chatroom activity, so running DESQview was out of the question. The other problem was the fact that we had this war between Expanded memory and Extended memory (RAM over 640k accesible). The 286s I used didn't access RAM over 640k well, so they were cheap but limited for DESQview. The much-more expensive 386 processors would use up to 4MB (or 8MB or even 16MB) but RAM was expensive, and I received many donated 286's for the good cause. At one point I had 12 286s in my bedroom to handle the traffic and phone lines.
MajorBBS was much preferred by my users, since the multi-threading internally gave ZERO latency to multinode communications (in games and in the chat area). This meant that multinode games were very realtime in terms of battles between players or players and monsters, versus Renegade where you might attack another player, and the 1 second delay would mean the player though he got away freely, but you thought you hit him. Lots of ugliness there.
MajorBBS also had X.25 connectivity, which let me access national users without them paying a hefty phone bill.
So, yes, people did use networks for multinode BBSes. Troll.
Its not a joke, it can be serious (Score:2)
If part of an industry is relying on something and it goes poof, it costs quite a bit of money to retool to accommodate such a radical change.
Also goes to show you that old isn't always 'bad'.
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:Its not a joke, it can be serious (Score:5, Insightful)
And it goes to show that Stallman is inevitably right.
There's no reason why bits "rot". The only reason is because that software is closed source, and the ONE company ordained to maintain it refuses to do so. This isn't a problem in Free Software, where anybody can pay a programmer to maintain it to X date, regardless if the original creator is long dead (or imprisoned).
This isnt just aimed towards old unmaintained versions of Windows, but also aimed at every piece of code anybody uses that is not documented and opened. If it's closed source, the user is a serf.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it?
One goes to the store and buys software. First Sale doctrine, right? Nope, you have to agree to arbitrary terms listed on the disc after you open it. After all, if you opened it, you must have copied it.
Many times, these softwares have protections to make installing your software harder, if not impossible (in cases of Starforce and other protections). After this, the only real way to gain resolution for getting your money back is to sue. And you probably wont get your money (hard to extract money out
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing about OSS is that it's POSSIBLE to maintain "abandoned" software. That doesn't guarantee that such software WILL be maintained, but it's still better than proprietary software, which guarantees that abandonware WON'T be maintained by anyone.
Its meaningless really (Score:5, Interesting)
If an OEM has purchased a pile of Windows 3.11 licenses from microsoft they can continue to sell it indefinitely...under the doctrine of first sale. So people who want windows 3.11 can license it until November 1st.
Admittedly Microsoft may stop the sale of NEW licenses which is what they are apparently are doing.
I suspect win 3.11 is licensed for POS devices and legacy applications. I guess all those people licensing that stuff will have to go to windows 95/98 embedded???
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect win 3.11 is licensed for POS devices and legacy applications. I guess all those people licensing that stuff will have to go to windows 95/98 embedded???
Anything wrong with porting that stuff to Windows CE or Wine?
Now, now... (Score:5, Funny)
Just because someone is using crappy hardware, it doesn't give you the right to use language like *that*.
Ridiculous! (Score:2)
Now how am I supposed to finish debugging the expansion packs I've been developing for Civilization and Duke Nukem 3D?
what a shame (Score:2)
Re:what a shame (Score:5, Interesting)
though I always hated exiting to DOS to play doom.
Actually, back when I was on a Windows 3.1 machine, I rarely even booted Windows itself. I took the "win" command out of autoexec.bat and just had it boot to a prompt. Most of what I did back then was run DOS programs and mess around on BBS's anyways (using a DOS based Terminal program), so I had little use for it. Even my word processing back then was done on an old copy of Wordperfect 5.1 that I copied (shhhhh) from my aunt's computer, so I even did my schoolwork in DOS.
Truth be told, for most DOS games that came out even after Windows 95 was introduced (of which there were a lot since DirectX came later and they wanted to keep games playable by 3.1 users), I still ended up exiting to DOS out of Win95 to play them.
Before I moved to Win95 though I did browse the net on Windows 3.1 for a short while. I was using Netscape + Eudora (and naturally Trumpet Winsock) to do my net stuff on that machine. My Win3.1 machine when I got rid of it was a 486DX 75Mhz with 6MB of RAM, an 80MB hard drive, SVGA graphics, CDROM, and sound card. Strange that it could still do the common web/email tasks I needed of it back then yet anything under a gigahertz with lass than 1GB of ram is considered unusable now :S.
You just don't understand (Score:5, Interesting)
Contrast that to Win95. When it was discovered that there was a serious bug in Win95 that would crash the system after 40 days of operation, the reaction in many places, including here on Slashdot, was "You mean there are people who have actually kept Win95 running for 40 days?" I doubt that we will ever see products from Microsoft again that had the stability required for process control applications that existed in DOS and Win3.1 .
Of course, If they need it, many OEMs will simply keep shipping Win3.1 solutions, just not pay Microsoft. They may be putting themselves at quite a risk, but it sure would be an interesting lawsuit to see get to court. I would love to see how Microsoft reacts to the "We had to pirate the software to keep our company running and it's workers employed, because the newer Microsoft software is such crap" defense. Likely Microsoft would not, and would drop the suit.
Re:You just don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
... and that's why your Windows 3.1 systems were stable. The stability of Windows 9x and earlier versions was susceptible to memory leaks due to their limited USER and GDI space. If your ace programmer had ported his app to Windows 95, it would have been at least as stable. The tick count problem was a stupid bug, true; but it was easy to fix and a patch was released for both 95 and 98. You could easily point to all the Y2K bugs in Windows 3.1 and call it "unstable" too, if you didn't patch it.
Re:You just don't understand (Score:4, Insightful)
they must have (had) a different kind of Windows 3.1 in your country.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
When it was discovered that there was a serious bug in Win95 that would crash the system after 40 days of operation, the reaction in many places, including here on Slashdot, was "You mean there are people who have actually kept Win95 running for 40 days?"
The most insidious part of the 40 (and some) days - 65536 minutes is 45 and a half days - crash was that everything appeared normal. The mouse would move the cursor and the icons were still all visible on the desktop. The problem was that no amount of double-clicking or keyboard shortcuts would make anything actually happen.
(I found this one out the hard way - leaving the machine on to let the daily backup complete, while I went home)
Those in Portland, OR, understand very well. (Score:5, Interesting)
I could very easily see them buying machines that are not technically licensed from Microsoft, on the grounds that Microsoft lawyers don't ride light rail, a little fudging of dates would conceal it from any realistic audit, and replacing every single kiosk with one that is powerful enough to run Vista would be insanely expensive both to buy and to run (electricity isn't free).
I wonder about MSDN (Score:2)
I wonder if it will still be available to MSDN subscribers.
(please feel free to ridicule the crap out of me if this was mentioned in TFA or on TFB)
I do have one nice thing to say about W3.11; if you can get it to run on anything about as or more modern then a PII it runs (and installs) really fast!
So when can I run Vista on my 486? (Score:2)
Just out of curiosity, if I did happen to be a guy selling 486s, would Microsoft have a Vista version that can run on it?
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: (Score:3, Funny)
make that last one "every five years"
Does anyone know who's using it in embedded? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see this as a niche product, one that fits perfectly.
Embedded controller. Low memory use. Weak (therefore cheap/easy on electricity) chip. Networkable, but no TCP/IP (no Internet can be good, i think our Canon copiers got the slammer worm a few years back).
Re:Does anyone know who's using it in embedded? (Score:5, Informative)
Rubbish there was a free TCP/IP stack for WfWg 3.11 as a download from Microsoft. I still have a copy on disk.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's still available, if anyone cares (unlikely): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/99891 [microsoft.com]
Embedded Windows 3.11 was crazy in 1993. (Score:3, Interesting)
Around the time that people were developing new software for Windows 3.11 they had the option of using smaller, faster, and less power-hungry operating systems like OS/9 (which had recently been re-released as OS/9000 but is now OS/9 again) and QNX had been around for over a decade.
It's not that things like real-time multitasking and POSIX compatibility were unnecessary, but rather that these features had essentially no overhead compared to the mess of already-rotting DLLs and captive DOS environments that Windows was built on.
The people who were using Windows as an embedded system were already considered dangerously careless by the hard real time community... we were dubious about using UNIX, and UNIX was an order of magnitude cleaner and more reliable than Windows 3.11.
I would rather not have a heart monitor running on Windows, thank you very much. If the products based on Windows in 1993 go off the market, because the manufacturers can't find any more certificates of authenticity in their warehouses, we'll be all the better off for it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So we'll get embedded vista or whatever comes down the line next. Even better! The companies that use Microsoft have already drunk the coolaid, and will not recover.
At least we still will have GEM (Score:5, Informative)
as OpenGEM [shaneland.co.uk] is still available and is being worked on to make it 32 bits. So your DOS machines can use OpenGEM instead of Windows 3.11 if you want to keep a GUI on them.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, when you keep on selling horse drawn carriages way past their prime...
Re:And elsewhere (Score:5, Insightful)
With gas at $4.00+ per gallon, that horse-drawn carriage is looking more and more appealing.
Re: (Score:2)
But that's the thing - if there's a market [amish.net] for something...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that's not the Microsoft situation.
They are much more like GM in this respect: able to be largely
oblivious to non-trivial user requirements and completely able
to ignore anything as saavy as planning for the future or
anticipating new trends.
Re: (Score:2)
Equally valid question: what real good would having the source available do for anyone?
Hell, what good would having the program itself (without source) do for anyone? It's really old software, I just can't imagine it serving any real use other than as a "Neat, look at this old software" toy.
Re:Why not open source 3.1/3.11 (Score:5, Interesting)
>Equally valid question: what real good would having the source available do for anyone?
And what about those of us who *do* have the source? (My university was one of the few with a source license.)
I wonder if end-of-lifing the product changes the contract terms.
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.
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, it was miles better than either Windows 3.0 ... which doesn't mean much.
Re: (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:Confused (Score:5, Informative)
The reference to XP is in the light of MS sunsetting the availability of that OS for most OEMs (save for those of the ultra-mobile class)--they're getting rid of something that worked and was accepted by the customer base. It may be a sound move in business theory (and, I'd argue, for WfW 3.11, something long overdue), but it is not likely to make some consumer channels happy.
Of course, you could argue that the writing has been on the wall for a long time, so let's hope that most of the WfW 3.11 users have been planning for this one...