NT 4 Source Code

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Ross - 21 Dec 2004 18:51 GMT

I was recentrly told by a fellow educator that MS has
released the NT 4 source code. Where do I obtain this?

Thank You in advance!

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John John - 21 Dec 2004 19:20 GMT

Yeah... right. Tell your colleague to go get you a bucket of steam and
some prop wash.

Statement from Microsoft Regarding Illegal Posting of Windows Source Code
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/Feb04/02-12windowssource.asp

MS hasn't even publicly released MS-DOS code let alone the heart of the
NT operating system.

John

> I was recentrly told by a fellow educator that MS has
> released the NT 4 source code. Where do I obtain this?
>
> Thank You in advance!

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Calvin - 22 Dec 2004 01:14 GMT

Hi John,

> Yeah... right. Tell your colleague to go get you a bucket of steam and
> some prop wash.

LOL

I have actually seen some (I presumed smuggled out) source code for MS-DOS 6.20
The description that comes to mind is 'spaghetti'

From what I have read (have a look at the book 'Microsoft Secrets' by Michael
A. Cusumano and Richard W. Selby - ISBN 0 00 638778 0) the codebase for NT4.0 is
probably in a better state of repair than this. From what i understand the
people who started the NT programme where code writers poached from other
VAX/VMS etc.. backgrounds, and had good coding skills and practices. It's
reasonable stability and behavior seem to support this notion.

The Win95/98 code base I gather was primarily written by Summer interns, and the
performance bears witness to this. Certainly after the demise of the Win9x code
line (and it's visit to the dumpster) many of the code writing team where moved
to WinXP - no wonder this OS has serious problems :-(

I am certain none of the code for any of the Microsoft OSes will EVEr be
intentionally released - I suspect that if it was viewed by serious programming
professionals, the state of it would be a major embarrassment to Microsoft.

Calvin.

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