Hi, On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:20 AM, Ralf Quint <[email protected]> wrote: > > I would have agree with Tom here, neither of those posts states > explicitly what the issues with those programs are nor what the "repair" > would be, beside "just dump them"...
I am not maintainer of those two projects. AFAIK, they don't have any active maintainers anyways. The issues have been mentioned to them before but apparently were ignored. They either rely on closed source programs to rebuild or else they include closed source pieces. Both of these are in "BASE" and should be free/libre since Jim Hall explicitly wants a free/libre foundation. We cannot in good conscience call FreeDOS "free" if we do not try to stick to those ideals. As mentioned, there are many purists out there, even developers, who will not use FreeDOS if it continues to include non-free software. I will not delete the main project files. The .ZIPs will continue to remain mirrored on iBiblio (unless Jim Hall decides otherwise). But I will delete COM2EXE.EXE in lieu of a simpler solution (debug script with comments?). I will also delete the underutilized JLOAD.EXE (and *.JLM) since it too is closed source and of little use to anyone these days. This is mainly for the upcoming FD 1.2 release so that there will be slightly fewer obstacles for anyone wishing to download or redistribute it. It's still far from perfect, most likely, but hey I can't fix everything. In short, to recap, this is not about demonizing proprietary software or deleting working software that people have come to depend on. These closed source binaries will still remain inside their original .ZIPs on iBiblio. I won't delete those, and I doubt Jim will either. But for the public-facing FD 1.2 release, it might be better to avoid as much non-free stuff as possible. FreeDOS needs to remain "Free" (or as close as possible if not totally impractical). We can't afford to be stubborn or lazy here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mobile security can be enabling, not merely restricting. Employees who bring their own devices (BYOD) to work are irked by the imposition of MDM restrictions. Mobile Device Manager Plus allows you to control only the apps on BYO-devices by containerizing them, leaving personal data untouched! https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/304595813;131938128;j _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
