Comment by ofalkaed

What would you expect to happen? Photoshop 1.0 is an almost unusably basic image editor by modern standards. It doesn't even have layers (they were introduced with Photoshop 3.0 4 years later). Even if the code was licensed in a manner that allowed distribution of derivative works (which it isn't), it's written in Apple's Pascal dialect from the mid-80s and uses a UI framework that's also from the mid-80s and only supports classic Mac OS. CHM didn't even release the code in a state that could be usable out of the box if you happen to have a 40 year old Macintosh sitting around. Here's a blog post showing how much work it took someone to compile it: http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_V...

I think Adobe decided to release the code because they knew it was only valuable from a historical standpoint and wouldn't let anyone actually compete with Photoshop. If you wanted to start a new image editor project from an existing codebase, it would be much easier to build off of something like Pinta: https://www.pinta-project.com/

I think there's two parts to this:

1) these historical source code releases really are largely historical interest only. The original programs had constraints of memory and cpu speed that no modern use case does; the set of use cases for any particular task today is very different; what users expect and will tolerate in UI has shifted; available programming languages and tooling today are much better than the pragmatic options of decades past. If you were trying to build a Unix clone today there is no way you would want to start with the historical release of sixth edition. Even xv6 is only "inspired by" it, and gets away with that because of its teaching focus. Similarly if you wanted to build some kind of "streamlined lightweight photoshop-alike" then starting from scratch would be more sensible than starting with somebody else's legacy codebase.

2) In this specific case the licence agreement explicitly forbids basically any kind of "running with it" -- you cannot distribute any derivative work. So it's not surprising that nobody has done that.

I think Doom and similar old games are one of the few counterexamples, where people find value in being able to run the specific artefact on new platforms.

you literally said:

> When will we get the linux port of Photoshop 1.0?

The appropriate word is "mistaken". It was explained that the licensing restrictions do not allow for a port, literal or otherwise. And "the linux port of Photoshop 1.0" is not something anyone wants when Linux already has far more capable photo editing software, and when much of this code is devoted to solving problems--e.g., interfacing with ancient hardware--that no longer exist.

Your disappointment seems to be a form of FOMO, but there isn't actually anything that you're MO here.