Early source code for Microsofts MS-DOS and Word to be made public at the Computer History Museum

Today, Microsoft announced that they would be dusting off the code for MS-DOS and Word and making it available to the public for the first time by putting it at the Computer History Museum.

The release of the code is part of an ongoing project by the museum to collect and preserve some of the worlds most used software of the early days, and making them available to developers.

Microsofts MS-DOS actually started when the company (microsoft) was approached by IBM to work on a project codenamed "Chess". Microsoft first provided a BASIC language interpreter to IBM, but was asked to make an operating system. Microsoft then created, and licensed PC-DOS to IBM and retained MS-DOS for other PC manufactures. Later in 1989, Word was released for Windows and and was generating half the worldwide word processing market's revenue within 4years.

Even as the developers are gaining important teaching tools, the museum is also winning big on this development, because it's quite difficult for institutions to get original source code. Paola Antonelli, MOMA's senior curator of architecture and design said in her TED talk last year that while she worked so hard to bring video games like Pac-man and the likes to the museum, the endgame was always to preserve the source code. 

Technology companies are usually very skeptical about releasing source code to the public (kind of like declassifying NSA files), and it could take years of discussions and work before they eventually do, if they do at all.

By: Ezekiel.T.Ogidan