Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 11:20:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: randir <goehrigd AT gort DOT canisius DOT edu>
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Back on track... Opendos's Not Unix!
In-Reply-To: <199705120218.OAA03271@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.970512110827.25288G-100000@gort.canisius.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Mon, 12 May 1997, Mr M S Aitchison wrote:

> Well, I think we both don't want DOS to become Linux, and want to
> retain DOS advantages in OpenDOS.  But if it isn't Linux, what is it?

	One big reason for OD not to be Linux, is that you can have
	 Linux & OD on the same machine.  I just got a new 3.1 gig
	drive, installed a Linux Slackware CD, OpenDOS and Win95
	and I've got over 2 gigs left to play with..

	So the need for uniformity isn't there.

> Somebody (perhaps all of us, perhaps only Caldera) have to settle on at
> least a broad idea of what OpenDOS is all about, what it is trying to
> be. 

	I think Caldera should make a decision what their OD should
	be (and I think they have) and I think we should be free to
	do whatever it is that floats our boats at the time.

	Look at the various flavors of BSD... All are more or less
	compatible with some minor tweaking, some concentrate on
	specific areas as strengths, others are more general.

	If people wanted JAVADOS, NET-DOS, 8086-VM-DOS, 32bit-DOS,
	ELF-DOS, ARM-DOS, they should be encouraged to try and 
	come up with it.  However, someone is bound to keep a nice
	clean pure DOS.. (or maybe that is another thing to look into
	creating :)

I'd say in the end, the BEST idea is simply to encourage people to customize
diversify and progenerate as many OpenDos derivtives as possible, while
keeping a clean MS-DOS compatible source somewhere in existance to build
off of.

	Forcing greater security, multi-tasking, long file names,
	odd binary support, and the rest, upon the core is a bad
	idea for it makes it harder for those with new concepts
	to execute them..

		and that is what open sources are for...