They've been at this for over 30 years. I submit that know their audience and 
their goals better than you do.
May I suggest dialing it down a notch -or twenty?
    On Saturday, February 22, 2025 at 02:30:53 PM AKST, Kirn Gill II via 
Freedos-devel <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:  
 
 >  As long as it emulates an Intel CPU with a BIOS, any DOS (FreeDOS and 
 >MS-DOS and DR-DOS) should work.PC-98 has entered the chat. (*runs a modified 
 >MS-DOS, but cannot run any version of DR-DOS or FreeDOS because it's not an 
 >IBM PC platform.) 

There's a multitude of things that a hypervisor could do to modify the platform 
inside to no longer be PC-compatible. We don't assume ARM = iPhone because we 
realize it's prima facie foolish to do so. Why is the same foolish assumption 
made for x86 in the face of the numerous non-PC x86 platforms that exist? An 
EFI system with no CSM cannot boot DOS, but a hypervisor could provide a 
compatible sub-environment. There's nothing to imply the opposite cannot be 
true. Also, compatibility is not a binary, but a gradient or sliding scale. 
Small incompatibilities can lead to things working right 99% of the time and 
exploding spectacularly the remaining 1%.

> And if VMWare someday stops running any DOS, we would say "VMWare doesn't 
> support DOS" (*we would not say "FreeDOS doesn't support VMWare").
No, you state that FreeDOS doesn't support %HYPERVISOR%. That %HYPERVISOR% 
dropped support for DOS would be the latter rationale given in a FAQ. Not 
everyone's going to read Eric Raymond's "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way", 
so it's better to proactively guide how users read (and interpret!) 
documentation to keep the signal-to-noise ratio low. If you're expecting the 
end user to figure out that %HYPERVISOR% doesn't support FreeDOS to also mean 
that FreeDOS doesn't support %HYPERVISOR% as a logical consequence, then you're 
grossly overestimating the intelligence of the average person (and are in for a 
very rude awakening!)

Know Your Audience. 
--Kirn Gill IIMobile: +1 813-300-2330
VoIP: +1 813-704-0420Email: segin2005@gmail.comLinkedIn: 
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kirn-gill/32/49a/9a6

On Sat, Feb 22, 2025 at 5:04 PM Jim Hall via Freedos-devel 
<freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:

Tom Ehlert wrote:
>> What makes you say so? Other then "I hate BROADCOM's overtake of
>> VMWARE"?

Kirn Gill II wrote:
>
> I provided, in my email you're quoting, the rationale - the "why".
[..unnecessary negative statements removed..]
> I don't have any skin in the hypervisor wars. I don't care if Broadcom
> tells their entire customer base to go to hell. I just care that if
> their products are a problem then getting rid of their products is
> the solution.

It's not hard for a virtual machine system to support DOS. As long as
it emulates an Intel CPU with a BIOS, any DOS (FreeDOS and MS-DOS and
DR-DOS) should work. It might emulate all kinds of other things, but
Intel CPU + BIOS is all it needs to run "DOS." That hasn't changed
since the 1990s.

And as long as VMWare supports DOS guests, then I don't see a need to
say "we don't 'support' VMWare."

And if VMWare someday stops running any DOS, we would say "VMWare
doesn't support DOS" (*we would not say "FreeDOS doesn't support
VMWare").


> P.S. I'd love to join the Sunday meetings, except I haven't had a
> Sunday off work since 2023. Perhaps we could have one at a different
> time (or maybe even day-of-the-week?)

We've done a few Saturday meetings, but Sundays seem to work best.


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