Mail Archives: opendos/1997/09/11/04:08:42
Pat Villani <patv AT iop DOT com> wrote:
> What are you all whining about? Didn't you read any of the
> announcements from Caldera? Did they ever promise to give you the
> source for the entire operating system?
Yes. They said they would be making the source to DOS available. That
implies everything sold in the package called 'DOS', which includes
essential utilities like FDISK.
> Caldera _bought_ the sources to OD and then placed both binaries and
> some sources on the net. You didn't pay a penny, peso, lira, yen, etc.
> Yet, you think it is your right to demand the sources for it all.
> Frankly, you are all spoiled rotten.
No, not demand. We have a right to expect what was promised. We supported
and promoted OpenDOS on the basis that the sources would be available (and
little things like it being compatible with the programs we usually run
under DOS).
The people at Caldera did nothing to disabuse us of the idea that all
the sources would be available. They said that they were releasing the
kernel first and the utilities would follow. Now they have changed that.
> Caldera is a business. They expect to make a return on their
> investment. The people from Caldera who get on this list from time to
> time expect to get paid for their services. The machine that Caldera
> bought to put the sources on so that you could download it had to be
> purchased. The internet connection has to be paid for and so on. Yet,
> you expect to get everything for free. Why, because it's software and
> it should be free? I know some of you work in the field. What if your
> employer asked you to write code for them but not pay you because after
> all, software should be free?
Guess what? My services cost as well. I paid to download OpenDOS, with
the expectation that I would be able to contribute by debugging and
upgrading their code (at no cost to them). I put in my time and effort
to testing their buggy software. It cost them nothing for me to do that,
so they owe me. And they owe a lot of people on this list a lot more.
> Someone asked why not write your own utilities. The answer was
> basically that it was too much work and its easier to get them from
> someone else. Someone else offered a list of GPL'ed alternatives and
> the answer was basically that it wasn't exactly what they wanted and
> there were bugs in that code.
There are Unixish utilities available. Personally I prefer those (and
haven't found them at all buggy), but they aren't drop-in replacements
for the DOS ones. They aren't designed to be.
> My question is: what makes you so special that Caldera, Linus Torvalds
> or myself should bend over backwards for you? You want free software?
> Then contribute your time to it. Support it. Contribute bug fixes.
How the hell can we contribute bug fixes to something when we can't even
compile it? A lot of the bugs and needed upgrades are in the bits to
which they aren't releasing the sources.
> Make donations. You downloaded software from a commercial concern and
> didn't pay a cent for it? Be thankful that they made it available to
> you. Microsoft wouldn't give you the binaries for free, much less the
> full source code.
Which is why most of us here won't touch MS software and won't write
utilities for it. If Caldera want us to buy their product they have
to change that. And yes, if Caldera offered OpenDOS with full sources
(as is done with Linux) then I'd buy it, as long as the price was
reasonable (I don't have $20 000, or even $1 000, to spend).
> Linux is very successful because there were sources to utilities
> available on the net and many people were willing to contribute their
> time and energy to make it all work together.
If the sources hadn't been available, they wouldn't have bothered. Our
point, I believe.
> Those people did it for
> various reasons, yet there are plenty of CD-ROM vendors, including
> Caldera, who are making a profit from their work.
So by supplying the sources Caldera aren't losing money. In fact they are
making money by selling code for which they paid nothing. And you think
/we're/ greedy?
> FreeDOS wasn't as successful because the kernel and all the utilities
> had to be written from scratch and too many people with the attitude
> that they should get it for free without contributing followed the
> development.
The first part, yes. The second part is irrelevant - what did it cost
the developers that someone got it for free and didn't contribute? (In
fact, they likely did contribute by testing beta or alpha software.)
The complaint is that not enough people were interested enough to do
development. Not very surprising, to me. Life's too short for most
programmers to spend rewriting DOS (I've thought about it several times
over the years, but not had the time) when we can write a real operating
system instead. The vast majority of my development now is done with
either Unix or with Unix-like utilities on DOS, and when dosemu 1.0
comes out I'll probably go over to Linux totally except for a few
DOS-specific applications (and even a couple of Windows ones, Unix
still has nothing to touch some of the music and WP software available
on Windows).
> Caldera used the open software model with a twist: use it for free for
> non-commercial applications but pay them for the right to put it into
> your product, resell it, etc. Smart move on their part -- make the
> software itself the vehicle to attract commercial attention. Sort of a
> grown-up shareware concept. I hope they're successful.
OK, I can live with that, if they actually did it. Except that they
then screwed it up by restricting a large part of the source so it isn't
in fact an open product. Too bad for them. They won't get anyone helping
them for free any more. And they will get a lot of people speaking out
against them for leading us on and wasting our time and money. I know a
lot of people who were excited about having the source to DOS available
who now will actively boycott Caldera.
We don't need OpenDOS. Those of us who use DOS already have a legal
version (yes, I bought MSDOS 6.22, and for the price it was and is
well worth it). The only reason we're interested in OpenDOS is the
availability of the source, so we can fix the bugs and do enhancements
ourselves. None of us are expecting to sell our recompiled versions
of OpenDOS, so we're not competing with Caldera. And frankly, if you
think any of us is going to get the sources and compile them just to get
out of paying for it you're seriously deluded. It's not worth it.
Last time I looked the MSDOS binaries were around $50, including all
the utilities. And if you don't want to pay for that you can always
copy the binaries from someone else, and save yourself several hours
work (assuming you have the right compiler and assembler in the first
place).
Face it, Caldera have lost our support. A lot of us will go over to
Linux and dosemu, most of the rest will stay with a product which works
(MSDOS), and those few who don't want to be bothered with Linux and
hate the Evil Empire(tm) can go fish.
Chris C
- Raw text -