On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 5:52 PM Jim Hall <jh...@freedos.org> wrote: > On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 4:00 PM dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote:
<circling back on that after Real Lifew took precedence.> > > You don't host non open source software on Ibiblio. > > I am principal maintainer for a site called TextEditors.org The focus > > is what it says in the site name. It's a wiki anyone can update. If it's > > a text editor running on a device, the wiki wants to document it. The > > hardware it runs on might be anything from an IBM Mainframe to a > > pocket calculator. > > > > Licenses also vary. An editor may be explicitly commercial, > > shareware, freeware, open source, or abandonware, where the code and > > docs are available but the author has long since vanished from the > > Internet. I don't care. I just specify what the license *is*, The > > one area where I draw a line is abandoned shareware. If it's > > abandoned, but the editor is fully functional without being > > registered,, I'll host it. If it's abandoned shareware that will not > > fully function without a license, and it's not possible to register it > > because long gone authors, I see no point to listing it. > > > > A lot of stuff I host is historical and long gone., as is the > > hardware it ran on. I do my best to provide pointers to documentation > > so viewers can learn about what it was, did, and its place in computer > > history. > > Interesting wiki. I looked up BRIEF but didn't find a download link on the > wiki: > http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Brief No download link because I couldn't find a legit one. Once upon a time, an outfit called Mark of the Unicorn made an editor for CP/M called Mince, which was an acronym for Mince Is Not Complete Emacs. It used the Emacs design and keyboard mappings, but there were limits to what you could do in CP/M where you *might* have 48K to hold OS, program, and data. It was ported to MS DOS by MOTU. As far as I can tell, it was then acquired by a company called Underware and sold/supported by them. Borland acquired the product from Underware, and released a version as The Final World. Final Word was then released in a new version and renamed Sprint. Sprint was a popular word processor for MS DOS, notable for an extensive macro language making it more like "real" emacs.. As DOS became moribund and Windows took over. Borland withdrew Sprint from the market. I have a copy of Sprint sent to me in the original distribution archive, but he didn't specify where *he* got it. Lacking provenance, I *didn't* make it available for download from TextEditors. I just documented that it used to exist. I now discover there *is* a valid link to download something called Brief. The publishers apparently rewrote it from scratch as a Windows application, but it seems to look and feel and have the same features as the DOS version. I may post a link to it. My problem is that I have no idea who actually did this. They just call themselves BriefSoftware, and I really like to put things like the actual author's names on stuff I document. Borland has been gradually releasing ancient stuff under a Community license, and things like Turbo Pascal and Turbo C are available as a free download and free to use. If memory serves, source is available too, but of questionable use. Good luck acquiring the proper toolchain and being *able* to change and rebuild.it. I recall Brief being promised, but not available the last time I looked. Should it *become* available. I\ll link to it on TextEditors/ > I also found WordStar but didn't see a download link on the wiki: > http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WordStar There *isn't* one. WordStar was never formally made freeware. It was simply abandoned. Note that the WordStar.org site explicitly *states* you will not find binaries there, and why.. It's front and center on the site.. It *is* relatively easy to find unauthorized archives, install, configure, and use it, but you won't find pointers to them on the WS site. (You *will* find extensive discussion in the site forums on. how to set it up and get it running on Windows10 using the open source vDos Plus emulator, vDos Plus is a fork of DOSBox, an open source, cross platform DOS emulator, aimed a folks who want to play old DOS games in things that *aren't* DOS PCs. I have it up here as proof of concept. It's not hard once you grasp a couple of underlying concepts. :-) DOSBox/vDosPlus provide enough DOS functionality to let you boot and run DOS games on platforms that may not be PCs or use x86 CPUs. The big lack is the shell, which provides just enough functionality to load and run the games. You can add that missing stuff with FreeDOS COMMAND, or 4DOS (my preference) and have a functional DOS emulator which can load things like TSRs (It has no equivalent of CONFIG.SYS and cannot load drivers that expect to be loaded in the boot process *before* DOS is loaded and active. If your program requires that, you are SOL.) Pretty much any program that ran on a PC should run under DOSbox/vDosPlus Not all TSRs will.) > I found SEDIT (shareware) in the wiki, but the download link points to > a Simtel mirror owned by someone named Michael Scovetta: > http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SEDIT That's been one of my problem children. Simtel.net no longer exists. Michael created a mirror he hosts. You *can* find SEDIT there. (Though I note he needs to update his security certificate. Firefox simply won't open it. I'm dropping him a note.) > When you say you'll "host" it even if it's proprietary software, do > you mean you actually have a copy of the editor on your site, and > people can download it from your site? Or do you mean "host" as > "there's an entry for it in the wiki"? Both. If the wiki has an entry pointing to the TexEditors back end, it's because you simply can't *get* it elsewhere. I heard about it, went looking, and was able to dig it out of someplace like Archive.org. I repackaged it as a standalone distribution and hosted it on Text Editors. The criteria for inclusion are "originally public domain, or open source, or explicitly freeware with source not available, or abandoned shareware which is still fully functional, or abandonware I could still find, and worked as delivered, but the authors had long since disappeared and could not be found or contacted". I don't bother to *list*, let alone host, abandoned shareware which must be registered to fully function and no longer can be. If there *is* a working link, the wiki simply supplies it. > Putting an entry in a wiki is different than offering a file for > download. When you offer a file for download, you are distributing it. > And that gets into copyright territory. Do me the elementary courtesy of assuming I am well aware of that. I have repeatedly stated my awareness in posts *to* the Freedos list, and made it as explicit as I could on TextEditors. I'm not sure whether you managed to miss my posts or failed to comprehend them. If the latter, I am unaware of any way I can make them more comprehensible, I strive at all times for clarity and simplicity. If You Don't Get It, I fear the problem is on *your* end. > Yes, I know that some of these programs are effectively "abandoned" > and the owners seem to be gone. But do you know if the owner is > actually gone? Because I spend extensive time doing actual *research*, which I ttry to *document* doing. If you had asked "That's interesting. How do you handle the following issues I confront?", I could have told you. Instead, you assumed I *didn't*. Bluntly, the implicit assumption I might *not* have is offensive and personally *insultiing*., If you want to continue this conversation with me, you can give me a formal apology and *not* do that again.. > Or did someone else (perhaps another company) swoop in > and buy the rights? There are other examples where someone has > purchased the rights to some really old software, and then come back > to sue someone. For example, DR-DOS (Caldera). I don't want to > entangle FreeDOS in the next "Caldera" suit. Especially since we don't > have a "FreeDOS Foundation" to provide air cover. (Creating a > Foundation is expensive.> No. As explained above, I *checked!*. > > My concern is providing copies of and information *about* DOS and DOS > > software. If the software is free to use but *not* open source, I > > don't care. It may not be posted *on* Ibiblio, but DOS/Freedos users > > should be able to *find* it, with a pointer on Freedos.org to > > somewhere other than Ibiblio where it might live. > > Do you mean like the "Links" page on the FreeDOS website, that links > to (among other places) archives of shareware games and other > applications? > https://www.freedos.org/links/ Something like that. > From my other emails a few weeks ago about updating the FreeDOS > website, I'm looking to move the "Links" content to other, more > visible landing pages. For example:> https://test.freedos.org/ That's fine by me. I simply want DOS users to find those resources *From* the FreeDOS site. If that's test.freedos.org instead of freedos .org, i see little difference. > And the https://test.freedos.org/about/games/ page (linked from the > "Play Games" info box on the front page) says this: <...> > I think that's what you are suggesting. Or are you suggesting some > other link somewhere else? No. I simply want to disseminate info about other DOSes and DOS software that is *not* free and open source. I want people looking for that to be able to do it *starting* at the Freedos.org site. That's all. Nothing complicated or convoluted. Just "They can find it here." > Jim ______ Dennis _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
