Hi, On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 1:03 PM, dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 1:18 PM, Jack <gykazequ...@earthlink.net> wrote: >> >>>> You may not consider it reliable, and Dennis may have some odd >>>> problem accessing it, but that website <http://ms-dos7.hit.bg> >>>> did give me, on 5-Dec-2013, a working 2-diskette copy of V7.10 >>>> which I was able to "install" on my system ... >>> >>> Do a ping, whois, traceroute, or nslookup on it. Tell me what >>> you get.
The website doesn't load for me either. > What do you use as a browser, and how do you reach the Internet? > >> DETEST the Internet -- I remember when it was totally "free", and >> absolutely NOT as "commercial" as it is now! DISGUSTING, to me, >> that almost all "news" URLs now force you to receive 500K or more >> of damned ADVERTISEMENTS, BEFORE you get one word of "news"! My >> system is still dial-up which saves "BIG BUCKS" for retirees like >> me, and I often ABANDON such miserable websites BEFORE they deign >> to offer me useful items! I use the Bloody Internet mainly as a >> vehicle for E-Mail. NO personal website, and I do not want one. > > You need to learn more about the Internet. For instance, blocking > those 500K or more of ads is trivial. I don't see them, because I do. Let's face it, all modern websites are fairly heavyweight these days. They're not really trying to target Lynx and w3m and similar browsers. It's Firefox or IE or Safari (Flash, HTML5 / Javascript) only. They just assume everyone has fast connections via broadband / DSL / cable / satellite. You pretty much have to have a fast connection just to download "modern" things (e.g. Windows service packs, Linux distros, streaming movies, online video games). > And sorry, but *something* has to pay for those "free" services that > cost actual time and money to provide, and ads are what pays for them. > "Free" in this context means "Someone *else* pays for it. I don't." Some content providers are better about it than others. There is a point where they are clearly hammering the end user too much. I don't block ads, but it indeed can be frustrating. >>>> The 2-diskette installation set for V7.10 MS-DOS, available on >>>> that site, does work well, and it rather STRONGLY suggests its >>>> "installer" was written by Microsoft. >>> >>> Like I said, it's also available from the last Internet.org crawl >>> if others have the same difficulty I did. I have no idea if such sites (like Archive.org) have government exceptions or not. >> I remain UNCONVINCED that the above site, or any others with that >> same release of V7.10 MS-DOS, is in fact illegal. > > If Microsoft has not formally released MS-DOS 7.10 as a freely > available download, it's *not* legal under US law, which is what we're > concerned with. Current U.S. law. As far as we know. > Countries in the former Soviet Union have > historically not cared about US law in this sort of case, so it's > probably legal for the Bulgarian site to host the download under > Bulgarian law. It's *not* legal to download and use it under US law Wasn't copyright originally only meant to last 20 years? So it's not like it was meant to last forever, eventually it was meant to land in the public domain for the public good. Well, obviously that's not how things really work, even in fast-moving tech circles (which seem to deprecate / obsolete / break something every single day). Seriously, we'll all be long dead if (not when) such things ever expire. Good luck running Windows 1995 software on Windows 2095! > There's a lot of "abandonware" out there that is no longer > sold/supported but never explicitly cut loose by the vendors, and > sites that specialize in it. The legal status is at best murky. http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/25/5028974/internet-archives-new-historic-software-collection But quite honestly, I'm more than just a little skeptical. I think they're playing with fire. There is no way that somebody somewhere won't challenge this. (And it wasn't that long ago that Atari / Infogrames released Atari: 80 Games CD-ROM for Windows, et al.) It's very very naive to think that this is permitted. Which is a shame since lots of software is basically thrown away, unable to be used by anyone. Worse is that binary (and source) compatibility isn't a very prized trait either. (And no, "modern" doesn't care about "legacy" at all.) Either buy what already works (commercial software, even if used) or help develop a free/libre alternative. I don't see any other good option. > Whether a vendor will take action will be governed by money. Taking > action costs money. A vendor will do so if they are *aware* of the > availability of the software on the Internet, and think they see lost > revenue sufficient to justify taking action. They don't have to take action, only threaten, which is enough to make people scared. Even if the claims are baseless, it's enough to force most people to remove software. > MS is likely not aware of the MS-DOS 7.10 distribution from the > Bulgarian host, and probably won't care enough to take action if they > are. It's not like they are losing sales. But "They don't care" > isn't the same thing as "It's legal." MS is very very vigilant about piracy, but admittedly they don't focus on "legacy" DOS or OS/2 or Win16 stuff nearly as much (since "modern" Windows doesn't focus on those). Saying "they don't care" is probably wrong on all accounts. But even they have limits on what they can do with their time. They obviously have bigger fish to fry, but it would be a big stretch to say they would be willing to let people do whatever they want with MS-DOS just because it's not "directly" sold anymore. (They would probably defend it legally by saying "the floppy image [DISKCOPY.DLL] is part of modern Windows", hence still part of a current commercial package still available.) > Yes, it's a technical distinction, but an important one. "Legal" > means "In compliance with applicable laws." Unless the vendor has > formally released software they no longer sell or support as freeware, > usable at your own risk, the software, while available, is not > technically legal. I think most people don't know and don't care. They just use whatever came pre-installed on their machines, which they update every few years. If some software doesn't work, they just buy the new version. That's how many companies expect end users to behave. Of course, not everybody is rich enough to afford that mentality nor naive enough to expect that all "upgrades" are good. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sponsored by Intel(R) XDK Develop, test and display web and hybrid apps with a single code base. Download it for free now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=111408631&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
