Wikipedia: History of Microsoft Windows/Talk

The article says:

: The first really popular version of Windows was version 3.0, released in 1990. This benefited from the improved graphics available on PC's by this time, and also from the 80386 processor which allowed 'true' multitasking of the Windows applications

I'm pretty sure this is wrong (although not quite sure enough to make the change myself). Windows 3.0 had a real mode (for any PC) and a standard mode (for 286 or higher). It had no special provision for the 386. Windows 3.1 dumped real mode and added 386-enhanced mode. One of the things that made Windows 3.0 so popular was that it allowed extended memory to be put to good use (assuming you had at least a 286). --Zundark

Before Windows 3.0, there was a separate "Windows 386" version of 2.0, but 3.0 did indeed fold that code into the main product, which used a 386 if you had one; otherwise it used the 286; it fell back to "real mode" only as a last resort, or when specifically invoked that way (which people did to run it as a task under DesqView? or something). 3.1 dumped real mode as you say, and added some extra 386-specific code.

The only thing I might change here is that the phrase "true" multitasking is misleading. Most Windows applications at the time were still 16-bit applications, which still used the cooperative multitasking of earlier Windows versions rather than the full pre-emptive multitasking available to 32-bit apps. --LDC

The article implies that most of the code was written by microsoft. Is this a true statement? I thought most of the underlying code was ripped from BSD and other 'free to be copied' Unix variants. -- mike dill

Urban legend, I'm afraid. Lots of people would like to believe Microsoft is stealing people's code, but they aren't. Some code wasn't MS original, but they licensed it legally from the appropiate corporations. Also, 'free to be copied' is a vague term... The BSD license requires credit to be given in freely available source code. Windows doesn't provide source code, thus the BSD license can't be used to borrow code. --Colin dellow

: Not true -- BSD license only ever required acknowledgment in documentation; there was no requirement to provide source code. And the University of California has since revoked the acknowledgement requirement (along with several others who used the same license for their own code), so anyone can use BSD in their propepriatry software without any acknowledgment. Microsoft could legally put BSD code in their own software, and they don't legally even need to tell anyone. But nonetheless I doubt they actually have, to any significant extent. -- Simon J Kissane

Microsoft definitely has used plenty of BSD code in Windows, particularly in the networking stuff. This came up recently in 2001, I think it was on Slashdot. With credit, though. You can find the copyright strings for University of California in a number of EXEs and DLLs. --Alan Millar

: Absolutely. For example, I believe the Windows command-line FTP client is pretty much a direct port of the BSD code.

Mentioned 3.1 as an upgrade from 3.0 that added multimedia/cdrom support. A stopgap extension was available for 3.0 to provide that functionality before 3.1 was released, but I don't know if thats important enough to mention. I might have insinuated the upgrade was about only multimedia... --alan D

No mention of the non-reentrantcy of dos as a major limiting factor affecting windows 1 through windows me perforance.

The whole tone of this article is strange for an encyclopedia. I'm all for M$-bashing, but in its place.

I concur. What in hell does "ME is very unstabe and the Microsoft Corproation apologises to anyone who bought the proguct" mean?

Article read:

In late 2001 Window XP was released in two versions Windows Xp profesional (built on Nt engine) and Windows Xp Home eddition (built on Windows 9x engine) Windows XP pro has been proved to be the most stable operating system of all time. (excludin linux) Microsoft has proven to been very effective at marketing its products. One of the results has been that Microsoft has changed product names to induce consumers to think that the technology has changed more than it really has. As of the year 2001, all of Microsoft's operating systems have come out of the same two lines of technology: MS-DOS and OS/2.

Not only is this badly written and shows anti-Microsoft bias, it also is factually incorrect -- both editions of Windows XP are built on a Windows NT core. There may be some code from Windows 9x in there as well, but the base OS is all NT. -- SJK

The OS/2 product line shows versions 1.0 and 2.0, but doesn't mention versions 3.0 and 4.0. Should those be mentioned here, or are they irrelevant to the article since they came out after IBM and Microsoft stopped working together? Thought it might be worth mentioning that OS/2 3.0 came out in 1994 in an attempt preempt the release of Windows95; I think that 94-95 period was probably its heyday, or as much of a heyday as it ever had. --Wesley