Sender: villani AT server1 DOT iop DOT com
Message-ID: <3417C07A.FF6@iop.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 05:57:15 -0400
From: Pat Villani <patv AT iop DOT com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Christopher Croughton <crough45 AT amc DOT de>
CC: patv AT server1 DOT iop DOT com, opendos AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: ClosedDOS???
References: <97Sep11.100023gmt+0100 DOT 11658 AT internet01 DOT amc DOT de>
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Christopher Croughton wrote:
> > 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).

Help me understand this point.  I was personally disappointed about a
month or so ago when a discussion popped up on the FreeDOS mailing
list.  There was a group of people who came out and basically demanded
that I finish the project quickly.  I was quite involved at work at the
time, working on the next major release of our product.  This included
some overtime, so spare time was nil.  When I tried to explain this, I
was confronted with a selfish attitude, basically stating that these
individuals didn't care if I was busy, they just wanted a DOS clone for
free.

This discussion seemed very similar and I guess my reaction was a result
of having been burned by the FreeDOS experience.  I felt particularly
burned by the FreeDOS experience because I reluctantly joined them when
I donated a commercial kernel to the group and they requested the source
for it.  I rewrote bits of it and made the source available to them.  In
the end, I had become the driving force when even the founder pulled out
because he was "too busy" at work to continue with the project.  This
was the second time he dropped out.  I was left holding the bag, getting
email complaining that I worked too slowly.  I donated _many_ hours of
time.  Nearly 100% of the complainers didn't donate any time at all.

My experience has been as follows -- there are lots of folks who are
willing to support a free software product as long as they don't
contribute.  At one point in your reply, you said that people
contributed by testing the alpha and beta software.  They really
didn't.  What I got were people who would just send me email saying that
it was "buggy" and I rarely got much out of them when I tried to find
out what the conditions were when the failure occurred, i.e., what
program, specific user actions that triggered the failure, etc.  I've
also gotten quite a few FreeDOS supporters who did write code but
basically "threw it over the fence" when they were done.  I've had to go
in and make changes when bugs occurred.

My question then is as follows: why did you support OpenDOS when there
were other DOS clones available such as RxDOS and FreeDOS?  FreeDOS was
and still is GPL with full source for the kernel and utilities.  What
was the deciding factor that made you choose OpenDOS?  Also, what is the
real operating system you would want to write?

I apologize to those on the list who may have been annoyed by my email. 
You can reply to me personally.  I won't burn any more bandwidth here.

Pat

-- 
+--------------------------------+------------------------------------+
| Pat Villani                    | Email:            patv AT iop DOT com     |
|                                | Amateur call:     WB2GBF           |
+--------------------------------+------------------------------------+ 
| I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, doctor, and I'm happy to   |
| state I finally won out over it. -- Elwood P. Dowd                  |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+