[Freedos-user] New FreeDOSers Monthly Reminder
-- We have only a few rules for posting to the FreeDOS mailing lists: 1. Don't swear. We don't want this mailing list to become what Usenet turned into. 2. Keep posts on-topic. Remember, we set up this mailing list to discuss FreeDOS issues. 3. No flame wars. If you feel really strongly against what someone has said, send a reply off-list. -- /* This is an automated message sent out to the mailing list at the first of each month. It is automagically downloaded from http://freedos.sourceforge.net/freedos/lists/remind.txt Feel free to contact John Price if necessary by replying to this message. */ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Sharing announcements about FreeDOS programs
> Just wanted to share a quick update that when I see announcements > about programs for FreeDOS, I might post them as news on the website, > or tweet about them from the FreeDOS Twitter account: > http://twitter.com/FreeDOS_Project > I may sometimes share them on the FreeDOS Facebook group: > https://www.facebook.com/groups/freedos/ > I don't have a hard and fast rule about how I share news, but my > general policy is this: > 1. If it's a new open source DOS program that's just getting off the > ground, I'll usually just tweet it > 2. If it's a new open source DOS program that's gone through several > updates and is clearly going to be around for a while, I'll tweet it > and post it as news > 3. If it's a new open source DOS program by a current FreeDOS > contributor, I might post it as news or maybe just tweet, depending on > what the program does > 4. If it's an update to an existing open source DOS program we already > include in FreeDOS, or an update to a program everyone knows about, I > usually post it as news and tweet it > And most things that get posted as news also get shared on the > Facebook group, if I'm logged into Facebook at the time. > Jim (Hall) Twitter and Facebook users usually don't go there to look for information about FreeDOS, and not everybody belongs to Twitter or Facebook. I have Facebook account but not Twitter. Also, FreeDOS or other DOS users might not be able to access Twitter or Facebook (?), but many also use MS-Windows or open-source OS, and many also have mobile phones. So this emailing list, or freedos-devel, is an appropriate place to publicize any significant news relating to FreeDOS. Tom ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS website
On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 3:29 AM Thomas Mueller wrote: > Excerptfrom dmccunney: > > > > MS isn't the only vendor of a DOS-compatible OS. DR-DOS and ROM-DOS > > > are still sold online. (Do OS/2 variants also count? Maybe.) > > > Which OS/2 variants? The one I'm aware of is eComStation, > > https://www.ecomstation.com/. The outfit that makes it got the rights > > from IBM, and essentially services accounts that still have > > substantial OS/2 deployments, and it's cheaper and easier to try to > > continue to use OS/2 than migrate to a different architecture. > > (Stardock, who does stuff like the Window Blinds and Object Desktop > > enhancements for Windows, developed under OS/s, and tried to get the > > rights from Microsoft but were unsuccessful. Not sure what they might > > have done if they were able to get the rights, but support for 32 bit > > apps would have been a major improvement for the OS. Not supporting > > 32 bit Windows apps effectively killed it.) > > There is a new commercial OS/2 variant now, ArcaOS from arcanoae.com . I missed that one. Thanks! > 32-bit, no 64-bit, no GPT, no refund it it doesn't work. 64-bit can be lived without. 32 bit is nice. The question is what 32 bit apps? The problem that did in OS/2 was lack of support for 32 bit *Windows* apps. The native OS/2 apps ecosystem wasn't broad/deep enough, and it needed to be able to run Win apps to compete with Windows. > Website says they use network drivers from FreeBSD, bit in that case, surely > one is better off using FreeBSD rather than ArcaOS. OS/2 > successors/descendants have fallen far behind. Whether you are better running FreeBSD depends on what you want to do. If you are running a server, it might be worth doing. If you want to run it in a desktop installation, you face the question of what apps are available that run under it. People get computers to do work. Work is done by applications, and your question is what applications can do it. With increasing portability of apps, we are at a point where what the underlying OS is may not *matter*. > There is also an osFree at osfree.org or github.com/osfree-project/osfree/ . > Progress is glacially slow, maybe they'll have something (relevant? probably > not) by year 4000. That sounds like what I'd expect. Their most recent news items are about moving their repository to git. Actual *development* seems scanty. > Peripherally on-topic for this list since it relates to descendants of DOS, > but we don't want to clutter this list by pursuing this side-topic too deeply. I'd agree, because OS/2 was supposed to be the successor to DOS. Had it been available when the Intel 80286 was released, we might all be running it now. It wasn't, and the AT class machines were simply bigger faster DOS platforms that could not take advantage of the new capabilities of the CPU.. > Tom __ Dennis ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Sharing announcements about FreeDOS programs
On facebook you will reach a lot of people, that do not read or even heard about the mailing list(s). Also I think it encourages people to get involved in discussions, reviews, ... if they see these on their phones every day/when something gets posted. It is definitely not a place for serious discussion, no "backups", ..., on the other hand people are "more free" in what they are talking about. I think it is a good place to share information in addition to the usual places. I just have applied for join that facebook group, didn't even know that it exists. 1464 people already in there, that is a lot... Nils ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS website
Thanks Gents! You ave shed additional light on a rather complicated subject. On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 6:24 PM Eric Auer wrote: > > Hi Don, at the risk of making this thread even longer... > > Yes, ebook readers tend to use Linux. Nicer brands even > publish development kits ;-) But Linux is a whole OS. So > as long as Amazon publishes any changes to the kernel > with sources, they can run any of their closed source, > DRM protected document viewers they want on their box. > Or you just buy another brand without DRM, of course. > > Another "fun case" was the modem chip in some smartphone, > I think even one by Apple. It took some GPL enthousiasts > some lengthy discussions to get ENOUGH sources for the > firmware to be able to understand their embedded Linux. > > Seems it was some Qualcomm Quectel module, also used in > iPhone 5, among others (EC20 MDM9615). There is a talk > about it: "Dissecting Modern (3G/4G) Cellular Modems". > > Cheers, Eric > > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0 ...now open source?
On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 1:29 PM Ben Sauvin wrote: > > Legacy applications can also be a lot of fun. For suitable values of the term. :-p > 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. The wife of an old friend has been nominally retired for 7 years. But she still goes into the office one day a week. Her employer is a municipal government who has been migrating off a mainframe. She's a COBOL programmer, and there is still one critical application written in COBOL and not migrated that she supports. When it is finally migrated I expect to hear her shouts of "Free at last!" from here, and I'm an hour or so away from where they live by commuter rail. > 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. Possible. But the issues of reverse engineering and extracting and migrating the data tend to be major reasons why outfits cling to old stuff. It's almost certain the data file formats were never documented, or if tehy were, teh documentation long ago lost any contact with the current reality of the file structures. > 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". They might be able to. I'd like to *think* they have long since migrated to something else, but I wouldn't bey money on it. __ Dennis ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS website
Hi Don, at the risk of making this thread even longer... Yes, ebook readers tend to use Linux. Nicer brands even publish development kits ;-) But Linux is a whole OS. So as long as Amazon publishes any changes to the kernel with sources, they can run any of their closed source, DRM protected document viewers they want on their box. Or you just buy another brand without DRM, of course. Another "fun case" was the modem chip in some smartphone, I think even one by Apple. It took some GPL enthousiasts some lengthy discussions to get ENOUGH sources for the firmware to be able to understand their embedded Linux. Seems it was some Qualcomm Quectel module, also used in iPhone 5, among others (EC20 MDM9615). There is a talk about it: "Dissecting Modern (3G/4G) Cellular Modems". Cheers, Eric ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Sharing announcements about FreeDOS programs
Yes. And to be clear, I'm sharing via Twitter and Facebook announcements about *FreeDOS programs that I see mentioned on freedos-devel and freedos-user.* So I'm just generally sharing when I tweet something vs when it gets posted as news on the website. I sometimes get asked "why didn't you post my (new) program as a news item?" and I just wanted to be clear that *just because you announce something on the email lists doesn't mean it automatically becomes news items on the website.* On Mon, Oct 1, 2018, 1:42 AM Thomas Mueller wrote: > > So this emailing list, or freedos-devel, is an appropriate place to > publicize any significant news relating to FreeDOS. > > > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FreeDOS website
Brand new to this mailing list, but I wanted to respond to a conversation about Open source licences, and apologies to the authors, I lost track of who said what in the following: >>> (Speaking personally, I'd love to see *FreeDOS* re-licensed under >>> something other than the GPL.) >> I don't honestly know if that's even legally possible now that Pat >> has died. (Gotta love legalese, ugh. No, I'm not a lawyer.) > I don't believe it is possible. >> I also don't think GPL hinders many potential contributors (versus, >> what, BSD two-clause??). I'll admit that GPL can cause some practical >> problems, in rare cases, but it also avoids or solves some other >> practical problems (again, in some rare cases). Firstly, *GPL still presently has no American legal force behind it!* dmccunney (I believe) mentioned Stallman's lack of touch with reality, and, I think this is reflected most importantly in the fact that he hasn't rallied behind any court case against any GPL violators. American law, based on the *common law* system, builds upon legal court precedent. When no one sues (admittedly an expensive process, that someone like Stallman might have to get funding for), it remains in legal limbo. Maybe I'm just unaware, and some company like Red Hat has already embarked on legal proceedings. But until then, violating GPL will *only *bring anger from the "open source community". The situation for an American violator parallels that of Chinese company that's unafraid of violating American copyright: No legal enforcement; minimal repercussions. Complaining about FreeDOS being GPL'd is a little silly. If your commercial company doesn't want or need the goodwill of the "FOSS movement", and can get a reasonable profit while violating any GPL, they might as well do so. Some companies might be afraid of this changing in the future, licencing is written so they might have a good case when it does, thus compliance is higher than it might otherwise be. PS I understand "legalese" because I earned an Associates degree in Paralegal Studies, not because I'm a lawyer. In fact I steered away from that career precisely because so many lawyers and law firms are jerks, and squeeze paralegals for all they can. Courts are also among the last to adopt new tech, which is why some paralegals might be interested in adopting software like FreeDOS. Compatibility with old apps and formats (WP 5.1 for DOS) is in demand with paralegals (more importantly with their deep-pocketed bosses). ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS website
On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 1:16 PM Cuvtixo D wrote: > > Brand new to this mailing list, but I wanted to respond to a conversation > about Open source licences, and apologies to the authors, I lost track of who > said what in the following: > >>> (Speaking personally, I'd love to see *FreeDOS* re-licensed under > >>> something other than the GPL.) > Firstly, GPL still presently has no American legal force behind it! dmccunney > (I believe) mentioned Stallman's lack of touch with reality, and, I think > this is reflected most importantly in the fact that he hasn't rallied behind > any court case against any GPL violators. American law, based on the common > law system, builds upon legal court precedent. When no one sues (admittedly > an expensive process, that someone like Stallman might have to get funding > for), it remains in legal limbo. Maybe I'm just unaware, and some company > like Red Hat has already embarked on legal proceedings. But until then, > violating GPL will only bring anger from the "open source community". The issue is that software licenses are *civil* law, not criminal, and similar to copyrights and trademarks. It is on the rights *holder* to monitor the status of stuff they have the rights to, and take legal action if the rights are violated. Fundamentally, open source licenses are a gentleman's agreement that assume everyone else is a gentleman is will play by the rules. Sometimes they aren't and don't. Whether Stallman rallies behind GPL court cases is largely irrelevant. The basic problem is that taking someone to court over civil law violations is time consuming and *expensive*. Who has the *money* to take GPL violators to court, and why would they bother? > The situation for an American violator parallels that of Chinese company > that's unafraid of violating American copyright: No legal enforcement; > minimal repercussions. Complaining about FreeDOS being GPL'd is a little > silly. If your commercial company doesn't want or need the goodwill of the > "FOSS movement", and can get a reasonable profit while violating any GPL, > they might as well do so. Some companies might be afraid of this changing in > the future, licencing is written so they might have a good case when it does, > thus compliance is higher than it might otherwise be. See above about gentleman's agreement. The problem is lack of interoperability between different open source licenses and is mostly an issue within the FOSS community among people who care about license terms and try to abide by them.. I can't think offhand of any significant amount of money to be made by ignoring the GPL and using GPLed code in a proprietary product. The stuff that gets issued as open source has reached the level of being a commodity product where it's hard to make money selling it. A high tech CEO got asked on the EETimes site while back about doing business business in mainland China where high tech firms were *very* reluctant to use new proprietary tech because once in China it wouldn't be proprietary any more. His response was "Bring suit against a Chinese company in a Chinese court, and tell be what you come back with." IE, you will get nowhere, so don't use tech in China you have IP concerns about. > PS I understand "legalese" because I earned an Associates degree in Paralegal > Studies, not because I'm a lawyer. In fact I steered away from that career > precisely because so many lawyers and law firms are jerks, and squeeze > paralegals for all they can. I don't blame you a bit. > Courts are also among the last to adopt new tech, which is why some > paralegals might be interested in adopting software like FreeDOS. > Compatibility with old apps and formats (WP 5.1 for DOS) is in demand with > paralegals (more importantly with their deep-pocketed bosses). Software becomes embedded and held onto as long as possible, because it's complex and expensive to switch.. A chap I knew years back was an Applications Engineer for a law firm. The firm made extensive use of DOS XYWrite, which was highly programmable, as their word processor. . He was looking for ways to get across to a senior partner that switching to WordPerfect (which the partner apparently heard about from a younger relative) was a non-starter, because too much of what the firm did with XYWrite simply couldn't be *done* with WP. The same reasons are why there are after market firms still supporting all manner of things, like OS/2. There is a large enough embedded market that *really* doesn't want to move off what they have now to support them. (There are folks doing Wang and Data General emulation, for example.) That market will not *grow*, but enough of it still exists to support some third party firms who service it. __ Dennis ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0 ...now open source?
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 wrote: > > On Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 7:51 PM Rugxulo 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 > 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 > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0 ...now open source?
On Sun, Sep 30, 2018 at 7:33 PM Jim Hall wrote: > On Sun, Sep 30, 2018 at 6:00 PM, dmccunney 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. I'm sorry you're disappointed, but it's a valid question. Suppose you give me *your* answer. Why do *you* think FreeDOS should be used? The FreeDOS mailing list goes to people who *use* FreeDOS. My question "Why use FreeDOS at all" doesn't apply to them nor is it likely to change their minds. They have reasons valid to *them* for doing so. Why should anybody *else* run it? > 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. I'm aware of why people on the FreeDOS list use it. A few are still clinging to and supporting the DOS setup they created and were happy with decades ago, and don't want to switch. As long as they *can* do that, more power to them, but at some point I don't think they'll be *able* to continue that way. The PC Gaming crowd is why DOSBox exists, and has the advantage of being cross-platform and allowing you to play PC games on things that *aren't* X86 based PCs. (I have some old DOS stuff running on an ARM based Android tablet using an Android port of DOSBox.) More simply want to run old DOS apps that will run under FreeDOS. But you can *run* most DOS applications on a machine running DOSBox, or on a Windows PC using a fork of DOSBox called vDOSPlus, which is how I do it. vDOSPlus implements a virtual machine with enough of what DOS programs expect to see to allow them to run. I have a number of older DOS apps I can run that way. Computers are tools that people use to work or play. The work or play is performed by applications that run on the computer. The basic question when getting a computer is "What do you need to do?" We are seeing increasing levels of application portability, as applications get written in scripting languages like Java or Python, or as HTML5/CSS/JavaScript bundles, or now written for the .NET framework which has been made open source and is available under Linux and OS/X. We are reaching the point where the OS you run simply may not *matter*. Your device choice will be matters of form factor and price, because the apps you need will run on whatever it happens to be. When I say FreeDOS, it's a bit like when I say Linux - in both cases, I am implicitly referring to the OS *kernel* There are lots of things, for example, that use a Linux kernel and are therefore Linux systems. My old Linksys WRT54G Wifi router was a Linux system. Because it used a Linux kernel, the source was available, and various third party efforts to replace the stock firmware appeared. I ran one called Tomato. Other things thqat have a Linux kernel uder the hood are the Amazon Kindle and B Nook eBook reader devices (and source for their Linux kernel and firmware is available. But the average user of those devices neither knows nor cares that Linux is under the hood, and doesn't *have* to know or care;. They can use the device to do what they want to do. This is a *good* thing. In terms of FreeDOS, properly speaking the challenge is to get the FreeDOS kernel to be the bootable OS on X86 hardware. If all you want to do is run old DOS software, or play old DOS games, you don't actually need to do that. So tell me, Jim: why should anyone go through the sometimes considerable effort to create a device that boots FreeDOS? I submit they will do it as a labor of love to see if they can, but the number who *will* do that is a small fraction of the total number of folks who just want to play old DOS games or run old DOS apps. Those folks simply don't *need* to *boot* FreeDOS an a device to do what they want to do. Suggesting that they *should* run FreeDOS in those cases is a disservice to them. > Jim __ Dennis ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS website
I'm glad this is being cleared up a bit here. Yes, I should have made the civil/criminal distinction. Yes, it's too expensive to be practical for commercial companies. But still, at least in my fantasies, Stallman would have done a big fundraiser to bring such a case to court, since he seems to be attached to principals rather than personal enrichment. My ex worked for the remnants of Symbolics. Ironically, when someone was interested in buying and making the company an educational non-profit, one new employee took it upon himself to propose Macsyma, among their other software, be open sourced, to the "benefactor." This undermined the CEO's pitch, though I have no clear idea what else made the negotiation fail, except the Harvard math department got the money instead(!). But I got hooked on linux and, at least the theory of, Open Source. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS website
So this statement caught my attention:" Other things that have a Linux kernel uder the hood are the Amazon Kindle and B Nook eBook reader devices (and source for their Linux kernel and firmware is available." Amazon may have released some part of the code but not all, else DRM would not be employed so vehemently. Which begs the question how much (or little) dissemination of code constitutes GPL compliance? On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 4:14 PM dmccunney wrote: > On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 2:32 PM Cuvtixo D wrote: > > > > I'm glad this is being cleared up a bit here. Yes, I should have made > the civil/criminal distinction. Yes, it's too expensive to be practical for > commercial companies. But still, at least in my fantasies, Stallman would > have done a big fundraiser to bring such a case to court, since he seems to > be attached to principals rather than personal enrichment. > > He is indeed. I don't know details, but I suspect his personal > finances place him *well* below the poverty level. I think I > mentioned elsewhere that Stallman reminds me of a monk in the middle > ages, living in a cave somewhere and supporting himself through alms > donated by the pious so he can devote his full time and effort to his > conception of who God is and and what his God wants us to do. > > I don't see Stallman as being *capable* of the sort of effort you > mention. Among other things, I'm pretty sure he has Asperger > syndrome, and communication with other *people* is what Aspergers > impacts. Give him a terminal and let him talk to a computer, and > things are fine. Talking to other *people* may be another matter. > > > My ex worked for the remnants of Symbolics. Ironically, when someone was > interested in buying and making the company an educational non-profit, one > new employee took it upon himself to propose Macsyma, among their other > software, be open sourced, to the "benefactor." This undermined the CEO's > pitch, though I have no clear idea what else made the negotiation fail, > except the Harvard math department got the money instead(!). But I got > hooked on linux and, at least the theory of, Open Source. > > Ah, the Lisp Machines vs Symbolics days. That was another formative > period for Stallman, as his notion that code should be shared had him > reverse engineering Symbolics developments and contributing them to > Lisp Machnes. > > The market for dedicated hardware running Lisp was transitory, and > evaporated as higher capacity general purpose machines that could run > Lisp acceptably appeared. (A beneficiary of the was Gnu Emacs, which > is essentially a Lisp interpreter implementing a Lisp flavor based on > Maclisp. Most of Emacs is written in the dialect of Lisp it > implements, and if you are fluent in Lisp you can get it to do all > manner of things. I knew folks who used Emacs as their shell on Unix > systems, because Emacs could communicate via pipes with the underlying > system, and you could have a terminal session in an Emacs buffer will > all Emacs editing features available. > > Emacs could also play games, and got extended to a full IDE with > access to source repositories, compilers, and debuggers. Developers > never had to leave Emacs when developing code. I know some folks who > still use Emacs that way. > > I have no idea what went on with the effort to make Symbolics into an > educational non-profit. But note that "non profits" does not mean you > can't make money. You almost certainly have to to remain a going > concerns. What non-profit status does is place restrictions on what > you can *do* with the money you make. (In particular, it can't be > returned to shareholders as dividends.) > ___ > Dennis > https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519 > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS website
On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 2:32 PM Cuvtixo D wrote: > > I'm glad this is being cleared up a bit here. Yes, I should have made the > civil/criminal distinction. Yes, it's too expensive to be practical for > commercial companies. But still, at least in my fantasies, Stallman would > have done a big fundraiser to bring such a case to court, since he seems to > be attached to principals rather than personal enrichment. He is indeed. I don't know details, but I suspect his personal finances place him *well* below the poverty level. I think I mentioned elsewhere that Stallman reminds me of a monk in the middle ages, living in a cave somewhere and supporting himself through alms donated by the pious so he can devote his full time and effort to his conception of who God is and and what his God wants us to do. I don't see Stallman as being *capable* of the sort of effort you mention. Among other things, I'm pretty sure he has Asperger syndrome, and communication with other *people* is what Aspergers impacts. Give him a terminal and let him talk to a computer, and things are fine. Talking to other *people* may be another matter. > My ex worked for the remnants of Symbolics. Ironically, when someone was > interested in buying and making the company an educational non-profit, one > new employee took it upon himself to propose Macsyma, among their other > software, be open sourced, to the "benefactor." This undermined the CEO's > pitch, though I have no clear idea what else made the negotiation fail, > except the Harvard math department got the money instead(!). But I got hooked > on linux and, at least the theory of, Open Source. Ah, the Lisp Machines vs Symbolics days. That was another formative period for Stallman, as his notion that code should be shared had him reverse engineering Symbolics developments and contributing them to Lisp Machnes. The market for dedicated hardware running Lisp was transitory, and evaporated as higher capacity general purpose machines that could run Lisp acceptably appeared. (A beneficiary of the was Gnu Emacs, which is essentially a Lisp interpreter implementing a Lisp flavor based on Maclisp. Most of Emacs is written in the dialect of Lisp it implements, and if you are fluent in Lisp you can get it to do all manner of things. I knew folks who used Emacs as their shell on Unix systems, because Emacs could communicate via pipes with the underlying system, and you could have a terminal session in an Emacs buffer will all Emacs editing features available. Emacs could also play games, and got extended to a full IDE with access to source repositories, compilers, and debuggers. Developers never had to leave Emacs when developing code. I know some folks who still use Emacs that way. I have no idea what went on with the effort to make Symbolics into an educational non-profit. But note that "non profits" does not mean you can't make money. You almost certainly have to to remain a going concerns. What non-profit status does is place restrictions on what you can *do* with the money you make. (In particular, it can't be returned to shareholders as dividends.) ___ Dennis https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS website
On 10/1/2018 10:14 AM, Cuvtixo D wrote: Brand new to this mailing list, but I wanted to respond to a conversation about Open source licences, and apologies to the authors, I lost track of who said what in the following: >>> (Speaking personally, I'd love to see *FreeDOS* re-licensed under >>> something other than the GPL.) >> I don't honestly know if that's even legally possible now that Pat >> has died. (Gotta love legalese, ugh. No, I'm not a lawyer.) > I don't believe it is possible. >> I also don't think GPL hinders many potential contributors (versus, >> what, BSD two-clause??). I'll admit that GPL can cause some practical >> problems, in rare cases, but it also avoids or solves some other >> practical problems (again, in some rare cases). Firstly, /GPL still presently has no American legal force behind it!/ dmccunney (I believe) mentioned Stallman's lack of touch with reality, and, I think this is reflected most importantly in the fact that he hasn't rallied behind any court case against any GPL violators. American law, based on the /common law/ system, builds upon legal court precedent. When no one sues (admittedly an expensive process, that someone like Stallman might have to get funding for), it remains in legal limbo. Maybe I'm just unaware, and some company like Red Hat has already embarked on legal proceedings. But until then, violating GPL will /only /bring anger from the "open source That is not quite correct. The FSF (Free Software Foundation) has a legal "arm" that has engaged in several lawsuits to enforce the GPL. Just check https://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/GPL%20Enforcement%20Cases But it is indeed correct (IMHO) that Stallman and a lot of his fanbois have a serious disconnect with reality. And that shows in the viral nature of the GPL(2). Some of the issues were leveled somewhat in GPL3 but the basic damage was done. And it could blow up big time in Stallman's (and everybody else's) face if for example people would their boycott/revocation of license for parts of the Linux kernel really pull through after the over-the-top code of conduct changes that some people immediately tried to push through after Linus pulled himself out of the day to day business for a while... Overall, there are much better suited Open Source licenses, like MIT or BSD, but the bonehead nature of the GPL has also resulted in far too many licenses that it is easy to keep an overview and really see any differences. And such nonsense like the spat that one entity has with the OpenWatcom license, while it is perfectly fine with another. Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS website
On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 4:41 PM Don Flowers wrote: > > So this statement caught my attention:" Other things that have a Linux kernel > uder the hood are the Amazon Kindle and B Nook eBook reader devices (and > source > for their Linux kernel and firmware is available." > Amazon may have released some part of the code but not all, else DRM would > not be employed so vehemently. Which begs the question how much (or little) > dissemination of code constitutes GPL compliance? Simple enough, I think: the Linux *kernel* is under the GPL, and the nature of the GPL is that any code that links *against* GPL code also becomes GPL. Code that runs alongside or under GPL code but does not link against it is not counted. (It's why you can use the GCC toolchain to develop code that will be proprietary. GCC is open source under the GPL, Code developed using it is not unless it links against GPL code or is explicitly licensed under the GPL by the developer.) DRM is separate from that equation. For example, consider eBooks. Those might be released encumbered by DRM, but whether they are is a decision of the *publisher*. *Amazon* does not require it. I was quite taken a few years back when Macmillan Books announced they were no longer selling DRM encumbered titles. Macmillan is the US umbrella imprint of German publisher Holtzbrink, and includes imprints Celadon Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, First Second, Flatiron Books, Henry Holt & Co., Metropolitan Books, Macmillan Audio, Picador, Quick and Dirty Tips, St. Martin’s Press, Minotaur Books, Thomas Dunne Books, Castle Point Books, Tor/Forge, and Distributed Publishers among others, and the statement applied to *all* of the subsidiary imprints. They determined that DRM was *not* protecting revenue, and *was* increasing friction for the customer, and dispensed with it. (Sensible. DRM does not prevent piracy, but does annoy the buyer. Removing DRM is trivial, and it only takes one liberated copy uploaded to a file sharing site for the horse to be out of the barn. You aren't losing anything by dropping DRM because the folks who get pirated material wouldn't pay for it in the first place. If they can't get it free they do without.) Amazon's original DRM was intended to lock buyers into the Amazon ecosystem, Buy whatever books you wanted, but make Amazon be the only retailer you bought from. they used broad selection and low pricing as additional means to that end. These days, I don't think DRM is much of a factor from Amazon's viewpoint. They have an enormous customer base, and they got it by reducing friction. I know folks who could find any book they wanted free of charge, but it's simply far more convenient to get it from Amazon. Find it in the catalog, place the order and get immediate fulfillment on the form of a digital download, or get the paper volume shipped to arrive in a day or so. That convenience is worth money to the customers, and Amazon recently became the next company after Apple to get a trillion dollar valuation in consequence. __ Dennis ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
