Hallo Herr Jerome Shidel via Freedos-devel,

am Montag, 17. Februar 2025 um 09:02 schrieben Sie:



>> On Feb 16, 2025, at 5:43 PM, tom ehlert via Freedos-devel 
>> <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Hallo Herr Jim Hall via Freedos-devel,
>> 
>> am Sonntag, 16. Februar 2025 um 22:20 schrieben Sie:
>> 
>>> I'm bringing back an item we talked about on the video call this morning.
>> 
>>> Folks have discussed a few times on this email list about dropping the
>>> FDTUI program from the distribution. But FDTUI was always "just one
>>> item in a long list of other topics" in whatever thread it was brought
>>> up in, so FDTUI never really got much discussion.
>> 
>>> FDTUI is only a file manager, but not a very good one. We have other
>>> file managers in FreeDOS (like Doszip). The program doesn't really do
>>> anything and is buggy. See below for details.
>> 
>>> I think we need to drop FDTUI, and not include it in FreeDOS 1.4.
>> 
>> +1
>> 
>> Which rises the question why it was ever included.

> Mostly, I think it was included for the following reasons:

> 1) It was already in the repositories.
> 2) It is open source.
> 3) It did not crash on startup.

(1) is a big hurdle, but raises the question how and why it got there.

For (2) and (3) I would be able to provide more then a dozen non crashing 
"Hello World" programs.


> Very loose requirements for inclusion.
+1

>> 
>> IMO FreeDOS included programs should have both a minimum usefulness and code 
>> quality, which FDTUI certainly doesn't.
>> 
>> Tom

> While I think it is nice to include a variety of programs for our end-users 
> convenience, I agree with your assertion. 

> Usefulness does become difficult to judge. For example, I personally have no 
> use at all for a lot of programs we provide. 

> I cannot see me ever using some of the utilities like B64, DAA2ISO, PASSWORD, 
> PBOX and many many others. 

> But, those programs could be popular and others may find them very useful. 

I think that every program beyond the default MSDOS programs raises some level 
of noise. 
They might be useful, but having hundred of unknown (to me) programs thrown 
into the same \BIN\ directory doesn't motivate 
me to search HELP on all of them until I finally find something useful. 


> I think it becomes difficult to draw the line of what is useful or not 
> without letting our personal bias get involved. 

> But once again, I think a lot of the programs of questionable usefulness or 
> popularity should probable relegated to online only.
+1

I don't mind having them online, downloadable. 

> I watch a lot of FreeDOS related videos for a couple reasons. But mostly, to 
> see how we could improve things.

> On occasion, the video creators will comment about a program being useless, 
> broken, etc. 

> So, those users would likely agree that at least some packages should be not 
> included in the release.
+1


Tom



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