Mail Archives: opendos/2000/01/14/12:33:31
On Thu, 13 Jan 2000 Charles Dye wrote:
> > It was my understanding that the case against Microsoft was over
> > and won on Drdos behalf, has anyone else read this and if
> > confirmed does it change the current progress of Drdos?
I don't know. However, it is true and sad irony, that some of the
most innovative development areas on DR-DOS were temporarily blocked
by the case.
> Not "won" but settled out-of-court. I imagine that means some money
> for Caldera, but precious little incentive for Microsoft to amend its
> ways.
You can read it in the news, that analysts speak of more than 150..200
million USD. But anyway, let's hope that at least the DOJ case will
fully go to court to get some *very clear* results on these issues and
the whole truth will be told to a broad world-wide audience..
If you have read the thousands of interesting facts pages available
e.g. on http://www.drdos.com, you'll see, that although both cases
are completely independent of each other, it looks as if there's
much in common between them.
> Scary thought: perhaps Caldera acquired DR-DOS *only* as a legal
> maneuver.
Positively no. It's easy to critisize in public without knowing
the background. I'm also not happy with some of their decisions,
because I still do want to see DR-DOS to have progress not only
in the Embedded area, but also on the desktop and as advanced DOS
compatibility box in Linux, but:
I can tell you, when I worked in their "Digital Research" European
Development Center, we had extreme synergy and all these great guys
had the fullest commitment to make DR-DOS a great and superior
product. (And from the technology viewpoint, I still think DR-DOS
is by far superior to other DOSes.) Look what they did with just
a dozend of bright people (although I wished there would have been
even more output and some nasty bugs would have been avoided).
However, sometimes it's hard to learn (for engineers - I know
because I am ;-), that there's more than just engineering, and
management decisions have to balance all the pressuring real-
world issues... Also, much has changed from 1997 to now...
Let me continue with some more general thoughts: If we think
back of OpenDOS times when kernel sources were published, there
also wasn't that much "help" from *our* side. Everyone was talking
about it, but only very few people actually started kernel hacking.
Only few gave support and supplied web space etc. I still remember
a number of infantil flame wars in this forum or odd ideas like
combining ANSI with COMMAND etc. ...
Personally I got many hundereds of queries for an English issue of my
MPDOSTIPs, but when it came to translate some bits I never heard back
from anyone of the handful of people who said they would translate it.
I also got uncountable queries when new issues of my tools would
be ready...
There are always people who give more than they receive in one area
(some by lacking talents in these areas and some by intention), but if
the whole thing is not balanced in some way, it is going to collapse
sooner or later... If you don't feed your cow, it won't give milk any
more. That's just as it is. Thereby you can draw a picture on our
current "world" society...
>If so, with the lawsuit over, DR-DOS is well and truly dead.
I really don't know.
But anyway, I hope in the spirit of GNU software and Linux, that if
Caldera/Lineo doesn't continue DR-DOS development, that they will at
least publish most of the sources, so that the net community can
continue to keep DOS alife. But it won't work, if everyone is just
hunting for the result, and will not put something into it...
Just some thoughts at the beginning of a new year...
Matthias
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Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany
eMail: <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Web : http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html
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