on most hated "OS" in the history of computing

[Saulius Krasuckas]

Hello,

This article is about Windows 3.x history and "architecture":
http://www.openwatcom.org/index.php/Exploring_Windows_3.x

It was nice sunday reading :) for me.


S.

[Damjan Jovanovic]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Saulius Krasuckas <saulius2(a)ar.fi.lt> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> This article is about Windows 3.x history and "architecture":
> http://www.openwatcom.org/index.php/Exploring_Windows_3.x
>
> It was nice sunday reading :) for me.
>
> S.

I read this a few days ago, it's a very good and humorous article.

Out of interest, why were you visiting openwatcom.org? Are you also
looking into Win16 tests for Wine?

Damjan

[Saulius Krasuckas]

Hello

* On Sun, 28 Mar 2010, Damjan Jovanovic wrote:
> Out of interest, why were you visiting openwatcom.org? Are you also 
> looking into Win16 tests for Wine?

Kind of.  I was looking into licensing problems preventing its inclusion 
in Debian.  Seems like I should try starting negotiation between OWC folks 
and Debian-legal experts on slight license changes.


S.

[David Gerard]

On 29 March 2010 10:14, Saulius Krasuckas <saulius2(a)ar.fi.lt> wrote:
> * On Sun, 28 Mar 2010, Damjan Jovanovic wrote:
> > Out of interest, why were you visiting openwatcom.org? Are you also
> > looking into Win16 tests for Wine?
> Kind of.  I was looking into licensing problems preventing its inclusion
> in Debian.  Seems like I should try starting negotiation between OWC folks
> and Debian-legal experts on slight license changes.

The problem is that the OpenWatcom licence is so unremittingly awful
that debian-legal went "ahahaha, you must be joking" and quickly
dismissed it. It obviously fails the DFSG in a ridiculous number of
ways. Heck, reading it myself I'm reluctant to even *run* the
software.

I'm boggling that the OSI accepted it, given the OSI rules are based
on the Debian rules.

I did email licensing(a)fsf, who said they may try to negotiate with
Sybase over getting it to actually being a free software licence.
Because it would be an obviously good thing for a good DOS/Win16
compiler to be free software. I don't know if anyone at FSF has
managed to do anything about this, though a legacy environment such as
this is likely not the highest of priorities for a tiny charity of
minimal resources.


- d.

[Damjan Jovanovic]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 11:14 AM, Saulius Krasuckas <saulius2(a)ar.fi.lt> wrote:
> Hello
>
> * On Sun, 28 Mar 2010, Damjan Jovanovic wrote:
> > Out of interest, why were you visiting openwatcom.org? Are you also
> > looking into Win16 tests for Wine?
>
> Kind of.  I was looking into licensing problems preventing its inclusion
> in Debian.  Seems like I should try starting negotiation between OWC folks
> and Debian-legal experts on slight license changes.
>
> S.

Why should Debian politics be a barrier to its adoption by Wine?

The installer from the openwatcom downloads page (version 1.8) works
well - just stick to the official release and not the "Alternative
Distributions" at the bottom of the page, which can't cross-compile.

Then after you install it, it's a simple matter of:
export WATCOM=/path/to/install/dir
export PATH=$WATCOM/binl:$PATH
export INCLUDE=$WATCOM/h/win
export LIB=$WATCOM/lib386/win
wcc -bt=windows hello.c
wcl -l=windows hello.o
wine hello.exe

where hello.c has this:

#include <windows.h>

int PASCAL WinMain( HINSTANCE this_inst, HINSTANCE prev_inst,
                    LPSTR cmdline, int cmdshow )
{
    MessageBox(NULL,"Hello world","Win16",MB_OK);
    return 0;
}

$ file hello.exe
hello.exe: MS-DOS executable, NE for MS Windows 3.x

:-)

Damjan

[David Gerard]

On 29 March 2010 10:37, Damjan Jovanovic <damjan.jov(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Why should Debian politics be a barrier to its adoption by Wine?

It's not that, it's what the actual licence text says:

http://opensource.org./licenses/sybase.php

Read what you give away just by using the software ...


- d.