I remember you, MS-DOS. I remember your bleeps and bloops, the non-curves of your blocky typeface, your very smell. And now, I can have you for my own.
For those of you who’ve hung on to this story to this point but managed to skip the headline, here’s the gist of it: Microsoft has open-sourced MS-DOS, its very first operating system. It’s also open-sourced Word for Windows, but whatever.
Microsoft actually bought the rights for QDOS (stands for “quick and dirty operating system”) from Seattle Computer Products in 1981 for a paltry $25,000. What happened next is computer history.