On Fri, Oct 27, 2017 at 3:45 PM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Jim Hall is a serious proponent of Free Software. I'm a pretty big fan
> myself. He has always recommended OW (Sybase v1, "OSI") and NASM
> ("BSD" 2-clause). I don't see the need to put obstacles in the path of
> future users and contributors. Seriously, it's very hard to improve
> software when you can't even easily rebuild it. I've rebuilt a lot of
> stuff, and none of it is easy, mostly due to bugs and omissions and
> sloppiness. It shouldn't be this hard.
>
> It's almost impossible for FreeDOS to live and breathe and grow as a
> project if we don't use Free tools. We've got too many great compilers
> at our disposal to give up now. If we're half proprietary, that's
> almost as bad as fully proprietary: it's external dependencies on
> volatile things that we can't control. Things like MS-DOS and DR-DOS
> are dead, no longer supported, no future developments, and hard to
> find. We don't want to rot and die off like them.Yes yes! Without getting in the *Free Software* v *Open Source Software* debate, I believe FreeDOS should be available to everyone, and should never become closed source. For that reason, I contributed my FreeDOS work under the GNU GPL. I want FreeDOS to only include tools and programs that everyone can use and modify, hence every program in the FreeDOS distribution is under the GNU GPL, MIT, or other open source license. I know the FSF isn't too fond of the OW license, but it is still open source (note: FSF doesn't like the term "open source" either). OpenWatcom works well and meets the criteria for FreeDOS. That said, I'd love to see other tools become part of FreeDOS. If there was a DOS-native GCC that could generate 16-bit binaries in the different memory models, I'm all for that. Jim ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
