30-Year-Old Operating System 'PC-MOS/386' Finally Open Sourced (github.com)

PC-MOS/386 "was a multi-user, computer multitasking operating system...announced at COMDEX in November 1986," remembers Wikipedia, saying it runs many MS-DOS titles (though it's optimized for the Intel 80386 processor).

Today Slashdot user Roeland Jansen writes: After some tracking, racing and other stuff...PC-MOS/386 v5.01 is open source under GPLv3. Back in May he'd posted to a virtualization site that "I still have the source tapes. I want(ed) to make it GPL and while I got an OK on it, I haven't had time nor managed to get it legalized. E.g. lift the NDA and be able to publish."

1987 magazine ads described it as "the gateway to the latest technology...and your networking future," and 30 years later its release on GitHub includes sources and executables. "In concert with Gary Robertson and Rod Roark it has been decided to place all under GPL v3."

Comments

Revealing my age.

[HornWumpus]

I actually tried to make that POS work (to run a multiuser dial in host) back in the late 80s.

Run away, stunk to heaven. IIRC only worked with _one_ rs232 UART (which had to do all the buffering in hardware). Didn't work well with that one. Just no. Waste of effort and money.

I should not remember those details...my brain's garbage collection is very lazy.

I'll download a copy, but only to burn it onto CDs to shoot at. Shades of '30-06 retiring' netmare 2.

Re:Revealing my age.

[HornWumpus]

One more thing: The docs were worse than useless, why it stuck in my head. Unless they archived and included their BBS forums, it's truly a waste of storage space.

PC-MOS/386 developers treat you better than Apple

[jbn-o]

Many years ago Apple sold a device with a custom OS called the Newton. Apple sold Newtons for about 5 years (1993-1998) but never released the OS under a free software license. Today some users still own, repair, and use Newtons but they do so with no respect for their software freedom. Whatever problems Apple built into the Newton's software (whether on-purpose or accidentally) cannot be fixed by its users no matter how technically skilled or willing those users are.

PC-MOS/386 currently requires a nonfree compiler (the Borland compiler) but now that PC-MOS/386 is free software it can be ported to systems so it will compile with free software compilers, thus avoiding the problem of free software with nonfree dependencies (what was originally known as "The Java Trap" named after free Java programs that depended on Sun's formerly nonfree Java software). We went from having no software freedom with PC-MOS/386 to being free to port and improve PC-MOS/386 as we wish! So PC-MOS/386 now that it has been released as free software treats you better than Apple treats Newton users. Thanks PC-MOS/386 developers for respecting our software freedom!