Mail Archives: opendos/1997/09/10/15:00:15
On Wed, 10 Sep 1997, worldmarkets wrote:
> Kurt Wall wrote:
>
> > I, too, am tired of all the complaining that goes on in this list.
> >
> > It would be _nice_ if they
> > released the source to some of the utilities, too, but since they were
> > not obliged to release ANY of it, I don't feel it is fair to complain.
>
> We agree that they weren't obliged to release anything. However, they let us
> believe that they would release utility sources. If they changed their minds,
> that's their right, but many people feel they were deceived.
>
> Some of us (myself included) downloaded OD to try it out so that we could make
> a decision whether to buy. If Caldera wish to have my business, they have to
> keep me happy. I'm not happy. But if enough people complain, perhaps they
> will pay attention, and will make me happy again ;-)
Exactly. I first found out about OpenDOS on the DJGPP mailing list
<djgpp AT delorie DOT com> about a year ago. Gene Buckle was the poster of the
announcement. The announcement stated that Caldera was releasing OD for
free on the net, and that sources would be made available. Why else would
such a message be of much interest to programmers on such a list?
I thought it would be great to have the sources for DOS, and thus became
interested in OpenDOS and helped spread the word about it. I went to
great lengths to inform as many people about it as possible. I spent a
considerable amount of time on several "opendos" mailing lists, including
the original one on tacoma, which later moved to delorie, as well as
caldera's own mailing lists.
A considerable amount of my time has been spent discussing opendos, and
fiddling with it in the last year - all awaiting the public release of the
sources for kernel and utility set.
My primary interest in the sources being the utility set's expansion and
the command interpreter, as well as adding support for ext2 and other file
systems.
There is no way I would have ever planned on building my own utilities for
ANY DOS free or not without existing sources to build upon. That would be
to large of a task, and too time consuming with no real payoff.
Had I known that the sources were NOT going to be released, I would have
never expressed such an interest in "Open"DOS in the first place. I mean,
after all, we all have an existing legitimate copy of one form of DOS
allready right? So why need/want a free copy of another sourceless
version of DOS in the first place?
As a programmer, my interest in OD was solely because of the forthcoming
source code. All of my time and efforts with OD, and advocating it were
based on the "not yet in my hands" official source code.
Had I known from the start that the sources would never be publically
released, I'd have never spent any time with OD, never participated so
actively on the mailing lists, and never became such an advocate of it.
Now I find myself going back to most of the people who I proudly bragged
about OD to (about the source code) and eating my words in embarrassment.
Never again will I trust any commercial entity in this way again. I will
never advocate something again that I don't have directly within my grasp.
I don't need/want a free binary version of DOS of any sort - that is very
easy to come by. I allready legally own 6 different versions of DOS
(original disk sets) from both Novell, MS, and IBM. The OD bins were not
any big free thing.
I'm very disappointed with this, now when I reflect on time spent. A lot
of wind has been blown needlessly by all of this.
I'm sure that Caldera is pretty happy for all of the free advertising and
advocacy they've received on this mailing list and its participants.
Well, I'm deleting my OD disk sets now, and discontinuing to advocate OD's
usage. Instead, now I'm going to inform about "misleading practices" of
all of this.
Time is money. I am owed something IMHO. At the least, I expect a
sincere apology from Caldera - not just to me, but to everyone on all the
mailing lists that have actively participated in advocating and discussing
OpenDOS.
That's all for now.
Take care.
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