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Microsoft Open-Sources Original File Manager From the 1990s So It Can Run On Windows 10 (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is releasing the source code for its original Windows File Manager from nearly 28 years ago. Originally released for Windows 3.0, the File Manager was a replacement for managing files through MS-DOS, and allowed Windows users to copy, move, delete, and search for files. While it's a relic from the past, you can still compile the source code Microsoft has released and run the app on Windows 10 today. The source code is available on GitHub, and is maintained by Microsoft veteran Craig Wittenberg under the MIT license. Wittenberg copied the File Manager code from Windows NT 4 back in 2007, and has been maintaining it before open sourcing it recently. It's a testament to the backward compatibility of Windows itself, especially that this was originally included in Windows more than 20 years ago.
On Windows and Linux, the file systems don't have this "resource fork" idea
Funny enough, NTFS has supported the idea since inception. But extensions weren't broke, so weren't fixed. And not to mention would have been sucky for any software relying on file extensions.
Also funny, OSX now does it by hiding extensions and interpreting the metadata inside of a folder.
There is an obscene amount of POSIX compliant code that breaks without 64-bit specific fixes. I know because I have to fix it at work.
And don't get me started on DLL - possibly the worst design decision in all of Windows (and that's saying a lot!), particularly given how DLLs proved to be a massive attack vector on Windows systems.
Yes, dynamic libraries were such a bad idea.
Increased attack surface? ya, youbetcha. Trade-off? You try running 150 processes on a machine with full software stacks without sharing memory pages, and let me know how that works for you. I've done my share of hackery with linux shared objects too. There was always a trade-off in them, and Microsoft neither invented that tradeoff, or had a worse implementation of it than anyone else. They're simply the most visible.