Future Tense

8/24/1998

JG (Jon Gordon, interviewer): Companies like Microsoft make a lot of
money conceiving, writing, and selling software. With this top-down
model, users have little say in how the programs come out. But another
model goes like this: a lone programmer has an idea for a piece of
software, creates it, and gives it away. And makes the code available
on the Internet. Others jump in and improve the software, making it a
global, collaborative effort. The best example is Linux, the operating
system that's making a run at Microsoft's Windows.

On a much smaller scale, there's FreeDOS, created by St. Paul resident
James Hall. Hall says he created FreeDOS because there was still a
need for such a text-based operating system after Microsoft switched
from MS-DOS to Windows.

JH (Jim Hall): People are finding uses for FreeDOS in ways I did not
imagine. These days I get email from places like Russia and Brazil
that have access to all these older machines--older PC's--and they
can't run the newer operating systems on it. They can't run [Windows]
NT, they can't run Windows 95. The only thing that will work on these
PC's is a copy of DOS. They can't get Microsoft's DOS, so they're
using FreeDOS.

JG: What's the beauty of the free software movement?

JH: The beauty of free software is that it allows people to contribute
something to other people. And they develop it because they want to
contribute. They're not just interested in making money. The money's
not really that important when writing free software. It's more a
sense of achievement, that you're creating something that's useful or
important to other people.

JG: How much of your time do you spend in the FreeDOS Project, and
personally why do you do it?

JH: I work on it a couple of hours a week these days. During the
business week... ah... during the weekends, I'll put a couple more
hours on it.

Why is important to me? I was excited to start a project like this and
people find it useful. And as long as it's useful to someone, I'll
keep working on it.

JG: It's a hobby, sort of.

JH: It's a hobby.

JG: Is there sort of anything subversive almost or sort of politically
utopian about free software in that it rejects more commercial
software development and selling channels?

JH: A lot of people view it that way. A lot of people use free
software just because it's not commercial and because it's not coming
from, for example, Redmond [,Washington]. I don't view it that way
myself. I think free software exists for itself, because it's useful
to someone, and because people enjoy writing it and using it.

JG: [That was] James Hall, creator of FreeDOS.

>> This interview was aired on NPR's Future Tense on 24 Aug 1998.
>> Used with permission.