To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com
Date:	Fri, 14 Jan 2000 16:43:46 -0800
Subject:	Re: Possible DR-DOS enhancements
Message-ID:	<20000114.165358.-4044827.0.domanspc@juno.com>
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From:	robert w moss <domanspc AT juno DOT com>
Reply-To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com

In the Jan 11, 2000 issue of the San Francisco Examiner there was a
story, (not much - 4 inches deep),
to the effect that Caldera Inc had settled out of court for 154M+ USD and
that the founder of the 
company said that he was very happy with the settlement. Then they
finished with the note that, since 
Caldera Inc is just an empty shell company that they were just going to
disapear into the sunset,
ie: take the money and run.  This suggests that the money from the
settlement was never intended
to go for DR DOS but just to make Mr Noorda and other company executives
happy after being 
bopped by the big gorrilla .

I also see that Caldera has not included their DR WebSpyder Browser in
the latest linux release, 
but have used Netscape Communicator.  They are also using the Red Hat
Linux release modified
for their release.

The way it looks, with all the splitting of Caldera into several units
and Lineo apparently taking
over DR Dos, Caldera may well be on the way into obscurity, with DR DOS
the first casualty.
Is anyone out there, who used to work there, still in touch with the
company and can find out
what is really going on.

As Paul says, if there is no-one out there interested enough to work on
this as a project, 
such as the Linux crowd has done, DR DOS  may simply stay at it's current
level.  Not everyone 
on this list is a programer, but almost all of us believe that MS Windows
is just a big bummer.
Even GEOS/New Deal is not to friendly, but at least if it crashes it will
reset itself.

Here's hoping things start looking up during the next 12 months

BOB 'DOMAN'
MOSS-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Bob 'DOMAN' Moss 
*"Remember, if you don't have chocolate*
* you don't have food"!!!!.............*

=======================================================

On Fri, 14 Jan 2000 16:20:34 +0100 "Matthias Paul"
<PAUL-MA AT reze-1 DOT rz DOT rwth-aachen DOT de> writes:
> 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
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> 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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