Hi, On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 10:18 AM, Jim Hall <[email protected]> wrote: > > Yes, these are off-limits. > > If you download and study the MS-DOS source code, you should not contribute > code to FreeDOS afterwards. We want to avoid any suggestion that FreeDOS has > been "tainted" by this proprietary code.
In fairness, (no offense, Jim!), there aren't many DOS kernel hackers in the world. So nobody is at much risk. (The closest I came in recent years to any kernel hacking was to patch / build that tiny fix for ye olde "Online Bible", which isn't saying much.) > Note that Microsoft released the > source code to an early MS-DOS (version 1, I think?) in March, 2014. But we > have consistently asked that FreeDOS developers should not download this. 1.1 and 2.0 were both released, IIRC, non-commercial only. Totally irrelevant and useless. I don't know a single reason why anybody would want to look at them (very ancient, less functionality, worse license). Do they literally do anything that FreeDOS doesn't?? Anybody know?? (Boot / run in 64 kb of RAM and from 160 kb floppy, perhaps?) > Also, DR-DOS was released as OpenDOS at one point, as Ralf says. IIRC, 1997 was the rise and fall of the "open" (DR-)DOS. AFAIK, it didn't even have all the fixes from Novell. > OpenDOS used a very strange license that basically said "you may look, but do > not > touch." You were allowed to study the source code to OpenDOS, but could not > use it in other projects, and could not modify the source code to fix bugs > or make it do something else. For this reason, OpenDOS is not really "open > source software," and I ask that FreeDOS developers do not download and > study the OpenDOS source code. I never looked at it. But I'm not a kernel hacker anyways. IIRC, they only opened the shell and kernel, nothing else. EDR-DOS of course was Udo Kuhnt's work, and he added a lot, but it was still "non-commercial only", so it's of no use at all to the free/libre crowd (indeed, not "open source" nor "free software"). I hope Udo is doing well these days. > DR-DOS has not released any source code under the name "DR-DOS." So if > anyone finds source code to DR-DOS, you should assume this is illegally > leaked and not look at it. They haven't had a proper release / update since 1998, so I don't think much else is going to happen there. Somebody still sells it, though. It was a good DOS back in the day, and it might have a few (very) minor advantages, but overall I don't see any huge need to use it (personally, even though I own it!) unless super curious or some such. Who knows, maybe somebody else has a better use case for it (and it is targeted at embedded systems these days). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
