This is somewhat offtopic from the FreeDOS development discussion, but
I'll post it anyway. There's an article that showed up on Slashdot this
morning, referencing the old 'DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run'
mantra: http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
Granted, it may be somewhat inflammatory here. Sorry.
From the article:
Some quotes: "For the version I worked on, we sweated bullets to make it
backwards compatible with existing applications." "We had to make
changes to DOS to help some very old applications that were doing some
very bad things (like writing to files that had already closed their
FCB's). DOS had to stand on its head to make every application work from
version to version, including Lotus." [...]
To me, this is a very interesting part of the article. We have recently
seen a thread here about chasing MS-DOS compatibility. One side of the
argument says that we should not be satisfied until we have implemented
every quirk/feature of MS-DOS. Another side argues that as long as DOS
applications that people use today work (for example, games and embedded
systems) then we have done our job; we can implement any broken/missing
stuff as it is discovered.
I've always considered myself on the "DOS should be a USABLE operating
system, and we shouldn't be afraid to throw off 'crutches' that are no
longer needed" side of the fence. When we wrote the FreeDOS Spec all
those years ago, I deprecated some commands/programs because they were
"crutches" to help applications written for earlier versions of DOS to
run on newer versions of DOS. Other programs were reduced in scope,
because the extra functionality really wasn't needed today (for example,
DEFRAG was taken off the list, because so many freeware / shareware /
commercial defraggers exist - or because many people run FreeDOS in a
DOS emulator like VMWare or DOSemu, and defraggers aren't needed.)
Compatibility for the sake of supporting applications is good.
Compatibility for the sake of compatibility is not necessarily good.
Anyway, my $.02.
-jh
--
I'm sorry my president's an idiot. I didn't vote for him.
-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies
from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles,
informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to
speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477&alloc_id=16492&op=click
_______________________________________________
Freedos-devel mailing list
Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
