Several people emailed us to share the news that Microsoft released the source code to MS-DOS through the Computer History Museum. From the MS TechNet blog post: "As part of this ongoing project, the museum will make available two of the most widely used software programs of the 1980?s, MS DOS 1.1 and 2.0 and Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, to help future generations of technologists better understand the roots of personal computing." But don't get too excited about the possibility of merging genuine MS-DOS code into FreeDOS. From the download page: "To access this material, you must agree to the terms of the license ... which permits only non-commercial use and does not give you the right to license it to third parties by posting copies elsewhere on the web." The website makes it very clear the "source and object code to Microsoft?s MS-DOS operating system versions 1.1 and 2.0" is for "non-commercial use" only. It's nice that Microsoft released the MS-DOS source code, but this is not "Free software." I'll add a warning that if you download and study the MS-DOS source code, you should not contribute code to FreeDOS afterwards. We want to avoid any suggestion that FreeDOS has been "tainted" by this proprietary code.

On Feb. 23, the Beez released 4tH 3.62.2. To quote the overview of changes from his timeline: "The preprocessor saw a major overhaul, getting its own C wrapper and numerous new enhancements. Several encryption routines were added (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256), coroutines and quotations. A tiny webserver was added to the examples." Feel free to visit the homepage or SourceForge or our iBiblio mirror to grab binaries and sources. Also check his Google Group for more status updates. Enjoy!

In a June 29, 1994 post to USENET, we announced a "public domain" DOS which later became the FreeDOS Project: "Announcing the first effort to produce a PD-DOS. I have written up a 'manifest' describing the goals of such a project and an outline of the work, as well as a 'task list' that shows exactly what needs to be written. I'll post those here, and let discussion follow?" Since then, we have advanced what DOS could do, adding new functionality and making DOS easier to use. And in 2014, people continue to use FreeDOS to support embedded systems, run business software, and play classic DOS games! To celebrate the 20th anniversary of FreeDOS, be sure to pick up a tshirt, mug, or other goodie from our FreeDOS store at Zazzle. We don't actually make money from this - we provide the FreeDOS store so you can find cool FreeDOS swag.

On Jan. 26, Jack Ellis updated his UIDE etc. drivers. Changes: "UIDE error handling CD/DVD media-changes for 'stand alone' mode is fixed (caching UIDE was unaffected!). UHDD now offers a 'Common' cache plus a 'CD/DVD' cache for UDVD2. NO change to non-cached UHDD/UDVD2 driver sizes!" See his freedos-user post for more details. Grab binaries and sources on iBiblio under dos/cdrom/uide .

In November, Lynx 2.8.7 was released. Lynx is a text-only web browser for DOS. The list of fixes and improvements is long, but you can read the CHANGES file for a complete list of changes for this version. Download from lynx.isc.org