Legacy applications can also be a lot of fun. I used to work for a "high tech" company that ran a kind of ERP on DOS machines. It was a mass of compiled COBOL, source code not available and the company that produced it already gone out of business. Moving through successive versions of Windows meant running this "ERP" in DOS boxes, which I found cumbersome and frustrating. When I asked about the possibility of moving to something a bit more modern, management explained that the cost of reverse-engineering the data files, extracting the data and moving them to another software stack would have been prohibitive.
I left them about three years before the year 2000. If they managed to find some way to circumnavigate the Y2K buggery, it's certainly conceivable they're still running that "ERP" after some twenty or thirty years, still in DOS boxes even if they'd also since moved on to a more modern OS for their desktops. Their DOS install floppies are probably long since bit-rotted into oblivion. I'd certainly like to think they could just install something like FreeDOS and continue using their "ERP". On Sun, Sep 30, 2018 at 6:33 PM Jim Hall <jh...@freedos.org> wrote: > > On Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 7:51 PM Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> FreeDOS seems to mostly focus on "four freedoms" (free/libre), aka GPL > >> or OSI. As long as we're as "free" as possible, I think we're okay. It > >> gives us the most advantages, and it helps the most people. But I > >> don't think splitting hairs on that end will (practically) improve > >> anything much, if at all. > > > On Sun, Sep 30, 2018 at 6:00 PM, dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > Agreed on being as free as possible, and the question is how free > > FreeDOS *can* be. > > > > The bigger question is "Why use FreeDOS at *all*?" No amount of > > freedom will compensate for no plausible use case to make the effort > > worth expending. See above about "hobbyist labor of' love." > > > I'm disappointed to read the above statement. And I'm really confused > why you would write "Why use FreeDOS at all" on an email list that's > about FreeDOS. This is not helpful and does not contribute to the > FreeDOS community. > > There are still lots of people who use FreeDOS. Some people use > FreeDOS to restore old PC hardware. Others use FreeDOS to play DOS > games or run legacy business software - either in a PC emulator or on > real hardware. A few people still use FreeDOS to run embedded systems. > What we all have is common is using FreeDOS. And that's what the > FreeDOS email lists are about. If you don't want to use FreeDOS, you > don't have to reply to the email list. > > Jim > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >
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