[Discuss] Home NAS redux

[markw at mohawksoft.com (Mark Woodward)]

On 01/03/2013 01:56 PM, Rich Pieri wrote:
> On Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:10:27 -0500
> Mark Woodward <markw at mohawksoft.com> wrote:
>
>> Well, the DOS version of Windows, windows 1.x through Windows ME,
>> didn't have TCP until Windows 3.1(1) (as winsock). The 386 enhanced
>> version, I'm not sure where that was implemented or by whom.
> Microsoft. It was code named Wolverine.
>
>> The Windows NT/32 bit OS/2 was taken from BSD.
> The TCP/IP stack that shipped with NT 3.1 was based on System V
> STREAMS, with code licensed from Spider.
>
> The TCP/IP stack that shipped with Windows 95 and Windows/NT 3.5 is an
> updated version of Wolverine. It has been part of Windows 9x and /NT up
> to the present.

Here's a few excerpts from an article you may or may not be aware of....

"Now, some of Spider's code (possibly all of it) was based on the TCP/IP 
stack in the BSD flavors of Unix. These are open source, but distributed 
under the BSD license, not the GPL that Linux is released under. Whereas 
the GPL states that any software derived from GPL'ed software must also 
be released under the GPL, the BSD license basically says, "here's the 
source, you can do whatever you want, just give credit to the original 
author." "

"I won't even swear on a stack of bibles that the "new" TCP/IP now 
shipping in NT/2000/XP and Windows 95/98/Me is completely free of the 
old code from Spider. Since I don't work there I don't have access to 
the source code. Certainly some parts of TCP (the checksum calculation 
comes to mind) are the same everywhere and once someone has written an 
optimized version, why rewrite it? And once again, this would be 
perfectly legitimate for Microsoft to do under the license. "

Lastly, this interesting (and telling) quote:
"Anyway the FreeBSD programmers who reported all this to the Wall Street 
Journal can't see the NT TCP/IP source either, so they can't have been 
referring to that. "


This is *exactly* why BSD license is bad. Microsoft didn't copy the BSD 
stack, Spider did. The intellectual property rights in this case is a 
mess.  Certainly there have been code drift from initial port, but the 
BSD license, allowing corporations to hide code that other people wrote, 
will keep this debate from being settled. I argue that it is more BSD 
than not, and you argue that it is not based on BSD. I wish we could 
look at the code to settle the argument. Oh! wait, we can't because the 
BSD license lets microsoft hide the code that doesn't belong to it.

>
> The OS/2 TCP/IP stack was written by IBM based on the BSD stack. It
> might actually be the BSD stack ported to OS/2 but I'm not sure about
> that.

>
> Have any more misconceptions that you need clarified? I got plenty of
> time to poke holes in your proclamations.
Thanks, but, I have worked closely with Microsoft since the early DOS 
and OS/2 1.x days. I've had many business trips to Redmond while working 
on system level components from Windows 2.x, 3.x NT, OS/2 1.x and 
Portable OS/2 which became Windows NT. I Saw the OS/2 presentation 
manager running on the NT kernel before it was known as the NT kernel.  
I've published a couple articles on Windows (NT and DOS) device driver 
development and contributed a couple chapters to "Windows of the 3.1 
Masters." I consulted with Sun for Java on Windows NT for medical 
applications, Dragon naturally Speaking for performance on NT, when 
Keithley Metrabyte was writing their own drivers, I designed the Windows 
(95/NT) portable infrastructure. I was also the architect of the Windows 
implementation of Microsoft's original "Microsoft Home" "Creative 
Writer" and "Fine Artist" products while at Turning Point. I think I 
have it covered. I work on Linux, because I prefer Linux. That does not 
imply that I do not know Windows.