Re: [Freedos-devel] Kickstarter project for FreeDOS 2.0

[Jim H. <jh...@fr...>]

On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Mercury Thirteen <mer...@gm...>
wrote:

> I have nothing against the project at all (it would be awesome to have a
> DOS with 32 bit speed) but I have to say I agree with Mike - the two
> projects should keep separate names. FreeDOS should remain an enhanced
> clone of MS-DOS since anything which takes it into the 32 bit realm would,
> in my mind, qualify it as its own project and therefore merit its own name.
>
>
I agree FreeDOS is an enhanced clone of MS-DOS

But for a moment, let's look at the history of DOS. Microsoft introduced
MSDOS in 1981, based on Seattle Computing's QDOS. Microsoft made
improvements and enhancements to MSDOS over the years, adding new
functionality and modernizing the interface, but always maintaining
application compatibility - because *APPLICATION COMPATIBILITY IS 100%
IMPORTANT*. MSDOS 2 added directory support, and I think it was MSDOS 3
that added CDROM support. MSDOS 4 had multitasking, but that was taken out
before MSDOS 4.01. Microsoft re-wrote MSDOS for version 5 in 1991, and
added neat features like a task switcher. MSDOS 6 in 1993 was basically an
enhanced version of MSDOS, plus a few modern utilities.

In 1994, FreeDOS aimed to create a free, compatible alternative to MSDOS.
And I believe we met that goal in version 1.0 several years ago. We've even
extended the feature set (read: utilities) from MSDOS 6. But FreeDOS is
still - essentially and most importantly - an enhanced clone of the old
MSDOS.

FreeDOS 1.2 and "2.0" need to remain "DOS." There are certain core things
that define DOS. We're small, we run everywhere, we use FAT, we run DOS
applications. That last point is most important, because *APPLICATION
COMPATIBILITY IS 100% IMPORTANT*.

And FreeDOS supports three kinds of users: people who want to run classic
DOS games, people who need to run legacy business applications, people who
use FreeDOS in embedded systems. FreeDOS 1.2 and "2.0" need to meet all
three of those users.

Sure, MSDOS is now a reference platform (i.e. not changing) but DOS isn't
static. We shouldn't be afraid to modernize FreeDOS in ways that don't
break application compatibility. We need to be really careful in doing
that. Minimally, applications written for MSDOS should still run under
whatever "FreeDOS 2.0" becomes. That's because *APPLICATION COMPATIBILITY
IS 100% IMPORTANT*. I think if DOS applications break in this "FreeDOS-32"
kernel, we can't use it. End of story. Aside from that, we are free to make
changes that modernize FreeDOS.

In short, I envision FreeDOS "2.0" as being a more modern version based on
FreeDOS 1.x.


FreeDOS-32 has been around a long time (since 2000) but they haven't
released anything to date. I was in occasional email contact with one or
two of the developers at the time, and I know they suffered poor project
stability. They completely started over more than once. They decided to
create their own filesystem (LEAN) which I still believe was a mistake.
They threw out a lot of code and re-wrote from scratch.

The FreeDOS-32 project went idle in 2005 without having ever released a
version of their kernel to try out. So I've never tried it. Looking at
their "explore" list on their front page, I've always known FreeDOS-32 was
VERY unfinished.

But the concept of a 32-bit FreeDOS kernel was interesting. Their goals
were lofty, but sometimes you need lofty goals to do something new. It was
an interesting project to watch.

So I am interested today to see if this kickstarter project can take up the
FreeDOS-32 code base and make something of it. But I'm cautious. As they
make progress, I will watch for application compatibility, because *APPLICATION
COMPATIBILITY IS 100% IMPORTANT*.

What I don't want to see is someone create a "FreeDOS-32" that's basically
a custom operating system kernel that does something completely different
from "DOS" and provides a compatibility "shell" to run classic DOS apps.
Because we have that now. It's called Linux + DOSEMU to run DOS programs. I
do that all the time today. And I like it, but I don't fool myself into
thinking "Linux + DOSEMU is still DOS" because it isn't.


jh