Hi, Dennis, I almost hate to bring this type of stuff up. It's almost flamebait because nobody can agree. So it's a waste of time. Nevertheless ....
On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 3:58 PM, dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 2:58 PM, Jerome E. Shidel Jr. <jer...@shidel.net> > wrote: >> >> I can't imagine anyone taking stuff from a FreeDOS 1.2 release and >> *wanting* to issue it as a commercial product. Rex released 4DOS as >> open source because it was no longer selling. The world had moved on >> from MSDOS and 16 bit, and so had he. >> >> It is not an impossibility. For example , the current version of the >> commercial product SpinRite runs on a FreeDOS boot CD. > > What has that to do with anything? > > Spinrite is and always has been a commercial product. The vast > majority of what ran under DOS back when was commercial. The fact > that it *runs* under FreeDOS is irrelevant. It's pretty relevant. Without a "free" DOS, he couldn't (re)distribute a bootable CD at all. He'd have to make all his users find a compatible DOS elsewhere, which is not as easy as it sounds (anymore). > It just means FreeDOS is > compatible enough with MS/PC/DR DOS that Spinrite *will* work under > it. That level of compatibility was a FreeDOS design goal from the > beginning. Yes, but compatibility means little if you can't redistribute (or easily acquire) the OS. There are many commercial, proprietary DOSes, but almost all of them have died (and can't be easily found legally). I'm not trying to overhype FreeDOS, but it's literally the only one who cares about that. Any one of them could've done it, but they didn't. > And as I recall, Spinrite only uses DOS to load it. It does not > actually use DOS once up and running, and has its own low level code > for disk access and testing. Great, but "barely uses" still means you have to have a compatible DOS ... unless he makes it like old PC booter games (no OS or only uses BIOS). > The issue is open source code in a FreeDOS distro being used in a > commercial product. I hate to nitpick, but please stop using "open source" to mean something other than OSI. Yes, it can be misused, and no, they probably can't stop you (trademark claims), but it's not beneficial at all to pretend that "open source" means just "sources available". Most people only refer to "open source" as OSI (or similar free software). > That may not be impossible, but it's so unlikely > that whether the particular open source license freely allows such > usage is something I wouldn't waste a moment worrying about. It's not unlikely or they wouldn't have bothered making such restrictions. > As a rule, if you wish to incorporate open source code into a commercial > product, you are expected to get clearance from the author (and likely > pay a fee for the right to do so.) Not at all. Who told you that? You're pretty uninformed here. "Open source" always means able to use without charge. The term was designed to be business friendly so that they could hire developers (if needed) to improve existing code bases, similar to (but broader than) GPL. Even GPL was designed more to sell future development as a service instead of perpetual royalties just to use a single-user license of proprietary crud that can't be changed. > If the idea is that only code > issued under an open source license that *doesn't* require you to > contact the author about commercial usage should be included in the > FreeDOS 1.2 distro, that's a profoundly silly notion. Silly? Aren't you friends with Eric Raymond? He's a very big "open source" (OSI) proponent. Heck, he co-founded OSI! OSI was meant to 'promote open source ideas on "pragmatic, business-case grounds." '. And business obviously means money, but that doesn't mean paying (over and over again) for frozen software. I realize that there's still lots of proprietary software, and not everyone agrees with OSI or FSF. But there is a heavy push towards business-friendly "open source" / "free software". It's just easier for developers (and those who are willing to pay people to improve public software). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mobile security can be enabling, not merely restricting. Employees who bring their own devices (BYOD) to work are irked by the imposition of MDM restrictions. Mobile Device Manager Plus allows you to control only the apps on BYO-devices by containerizing them, leaving personal data untouched! https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/304595813;131938128;j _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
