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A comment on Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code discovered to date".

Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by jmward01 on Saturday May 23, 2026 @11:31PM (#48254089)
It is rare that I say this but, thanks MS! Arguably just as, if not more, important is the BASIC that they wrote. That was what they actually wanted to do. DOS just got them the contract with IBM. For decades MS was really a developer tools company with a side biz of writing operating systems and other misc software. They also open sourced that BASIC code too [1].

[1] https://opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09/03/microsoft-o...

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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by BobbyTables2 on Sunday May 24, 2026 @11:08AM (#48257866)
Ah, the good ol’ “Embrace, Extend, … Extinguish”
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by JJOKOCHAA on Monday May 25, 2026 @09:25AM (#48266576)
lmao
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by pjmlp on Tuesday May 26, 2026 @03:42AM (#48276415)
Yes, sadly even VB is at the end of the road, as the .NET team nowadays only focus on C#.
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by dboreham on Sunday May 24, 2026 @12:49PM (#48258872)
Nit: the pdp-10 is generally considered a mainframe not a minicomputer.
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by verst on Monday May 25, 2026 @01:54PM (#48269687)
They had a working PDP-10 at the Living Computers Museum (since shut down by Paul Allen's estate). Definitely a mainframe. That thing takes up an entire room.
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by pjmlp on Tuesday May 26, 2026 @03:41AM (#48276410)
Kudos for the compilers reference, this is something that many to this day aren't aware, thinking that BASIC started as interpreted and compilers came later, when it was actually an engineering decision to make it fit into microcomputers.
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by ramon156 on Sunday May 24, 2026 @04:21AM (#48255548)
I dont think I've ever seen a commit that says "49 years ago". Damn.
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by pletnes on Sunday May 24, 2026 @07:50AM (#48256502)
1968 https://www.netlib.org/go/fft.f
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by formerly_proven on Sunday May 24, 2026 @04:54AM (#48255701)
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by zymhan on Sunday May 24, 2026 @10:24PM (#48262875)
I was confused by the short commit history, and then I checked the branches.

I love that someone went to this effort.

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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by RobotToaster on Sunday May 24, 2026 @12:43PM (#48258811)
Not quite as old, but brl-cad is still in active development and has commits from 1983. https://github.com/BRL-CAD/brlcad/graphs/contributors?all=1
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by mapM on Sunday May 24, 2026 @10:58PM (#48263024)
It's funny that the .gitignore is marked as being from 49 years ago ...
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by nextaccountic on Monday May 25, 2026 @02:09AM (#48263908)
Even the README here is (erroneously?) timestamped as 1978 https://github.com/microsoft/BASIC-M6502

Which is unlikely since it seems to be written by AI

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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by chungy on Monday May 25, 2026 @06:05AM (#48265179)
Files in Git don't have timestamps, only commits do. It got swept up when `git commit --date=...` was run.
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by nextaccountic on Monday May 25, 2026 @07:07AM (#48265521)
oh I see. proper archeology would be to have more commits then
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by steve1977 on Sunday May 24, 2026 @04:23AM (#48255552)
I remember when I realized I had been using Microsoft all along through my Commodore 64.
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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by jimt1234 on Sunday May 24, 2026 @03:26PM (#48260254)
The Commodore 64 got me started in computers, back when I was in grade school. Countless late nights programming in BASIC. All this time I never knew BASIC was licensed from Microsoft. Thanks!

"Commodore licensed BASIC from Microsoft in 1977 on a 'pay once, no royalties' basis after Jack Tramiel turned down Bill Gates' offer of a $3 per unit fee, stating, 'I'm already married,' and would pay no more than $25,000 for a perpetual license."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_BASIC

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Re:Microsoft open-sources "the earliest DOS source code disc... by gerdesj on Sunday May 24, 2026 @07:11PM (#48261937)
I still have my C64 (it only needed some capacitors replacing a few years back) from about 1984ish but for me it was just a games machine although I did type in an awful lot of machine code from books later on.

I still remember the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) thing and low pass, high pass and band pass for sound and have some unlikely memories about graphics primitives too for a middle aged bloke!

My original Quickshot II still works. You might bear in mind Daley Thompson's Decathlon was popular in the UK back in the day and it was designed to destroy joysticks.

My C64 now has a USB interface ...

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