>Why did you decide to create a new version of DOS that
>is compatable with MS-DOS?

It all started back in 1994.  I was a physics student at the
University of Wisconsin-River Falls, and I used DOS quite a lot to do
data analysis, write papers and physics reports, dial into the
University network, and write small programs to help make my life
easier.  DOS meant a lot to me, and I was most comfortable with using
DOS to get my work done.

So it was a bit of a surprise when Microsoft announced that they would
stop support of MS-DOS, and that everyone would soon be using their
Windows product.  (Of course, note the timing: this is a little over a
year before the launch of Windows 95.)  I didn't like Windows (then,
at version 3.1) because I felt it made my work too difficult.  I could
accomplish the same tasks in DOS, mostly using the command line, and I
could do it faster than in Windows.  In Windows, everything was done
with a mouse.  It just slowed me down, and I felt it was a sloppy GUI.

I wasn't alone.  A lot of other people on various DOS newsgroups were
shocked to hear that MS-DOS would soon go away.  They didn't like
Windows any more than I did, and they were just as resistant in being
"forced" to migrate to Windows and away from our lovely DOS operating
system.  And many people did not have machines capable of running even
Windows 3.1, let alone a "next generation" version of Windows.  I had
a '386 with 4MB memory (later upgraded to 8MB.)  A lot of people still
had '286 PC's.  You just can't run Windows in that.  If Microsoft were
going to push us towards Windows, we'd need to upgrade our PC's.  And
that didn't seem right.  We felt as though our freedom were being
taken away by Microsoft's decision to stop supporting MS-DOS.

So, on the newsgroups, people started trying to find ways to preserve
their freedom.  By 1994, Linux had become an underground success story
in a lot of Universities.  People looked to Linux and asked, "if they
can create an free version of UNIX, can we create a free version of
DOS?"  I had already installed Linux in a dual-boot configuration
(with MS-DOS) on my '386, so I knew what a great operating system
Linux was.  Writing a version of DOS seemed almost trivial next to a
multi-tasking, multi-user UNIX kernel.

After a number of weeks, no one on the DOS newsgroups seemed to be
interested in *starting* a free DOS project, but a lot of people
definitely *wanted* one.  I was afraid that if someone didn't at least
*try* to create a free DOS, the initiative might be lost, so I posted
a note to the newsgroups announcing my intention to create such a
project.  I called it "PD-DOS", because I thought a lot of the code
would be in the public domain.  (I didn't understand the distinction
between "public domain" and "free software" at this point.)  Along
with the first PD-DOS Manifesto, I posted several DOS utilities that I
had written to reproduce some functionality of MS-DOS.

People liked the idea!  And I immediately started to get email from
people who wanted to contribute.  A few more programs were
contributed, and we started scanning the ftp sites for free programs
that reproduced MS-DOS functionality and that included source code.

Later, we realized that a lot of us were using the GNU GPL for our
programs, and what we were creating was Free software, not software in
the public domain.  So we changed the name to Free-DOS.  Tim Norman
started writing a Free-DOS command.com, and Pat Villani contacted me
about his DOS/NT kernel (which later was renamed DOS-C, the FreeDOS
Kernel.)  From there, the FreeDOS Project became more and more
popular, until it became what you see today!

  By the way, if you're interested about the "Free-DOS" vs. "FreeDOS"
  thing: Pat Villani published a book about writing his DOS kernel.
  It's a good read; go buy it.  The way the story goes, it was supposed
  to be titled "The Free-DOS Kernel", but his publisher or agent didn't
  like the way the dash appeared on the cover title.  So it was changed
  to "The FreeDOS Kernel".  And we sort of adopted the new spelling.


>FreeDOS is released under the GNU General Public
>License, the same one used by Linux.  With the Linux
>operating systems, there are many different
>distributions.  Do you think there will be other
>distributions of FreeDOS available?

Actually, there already are, but you don't see them out there because
they like to drop the "FreeDOS" name and use some other "*DOS" name.
RealDOS is a distribution based on the FreeDOS kernel.  There is at
least one other, but I never looked at it, so I can't remember the
name.

I hope we'll see other FreeDOS distributions.  I certainly think that
would make things more interesting, and I'd like to find out how
someone else would build their distributions and see what choices they
made to create it (for example, what GUI.)


>Do you feel the FreeDOS project has been sucessful so
>far?  

I think we've been very successful.  Early into the project, I was
glad to see that people found FreeDOS an interesting project to use
and to work with.  I was even happier to see, since we adopted the GNU
GPL for much of our code, that people have been so willing to "open up
the hood" and provide their own hacks to different areas of FreeDOS.

I have also been pleased to see that companies have not shied away
from us.  Several companies use FreeDOS as the DOS on "rescue" boot
floppies for systems.  Others use FreeDOS on configuration floppies
for their hardware.  Still others distribute a FreeDOS bootable floppy
to update the BIOS on hardware that they sell.  Basically, FreeDOS is
definitely being used "in the wild".

But judging by commercial response should not be the only measure.  I
consider our reputation by users to be the most important.


>What do you think has been the biggest challenge so
>far in the FreeDOS project?  Do you see any big
>challenges up ahead?

Dealing with the occassional flame was on the mailing list.. :)


>According to your web site, you do not currently have
>plans to make a GUI or work on multitasking
>capabilities for FreeDOS.  Do you think in the future
>you might concentrate more on that?

For the GUI, I don't think the FreeDOS Project will ever concentrate
on that.  There are already other teams out there that are writing or
have written a GUI for DOS.  SEAL is one that I like quite a lot.
Dwin, GEM, and Desktop are others.  We include a number of GUIs with
the FreeDOS distributions, although in future I may only include one
(it takes a lot of time to generate those packages for the different
GUIs.)

There have been efforts to bring FreeDOS to the 32-bit world.
However, these have largely been unsuccessful, perhaps because not a
lot of people seem to want to run DOS on a 32-bit platform as their
primary operating system.  If you have a 32-bit CPU and you want to
run DOS, most people will choose to run Linux or some other 32-bit OS
(Windows, ...) and run FreeDOS in an emulated environment (Linux
DOSEmu, VMWare, ...)

So people already have an easy way to run FreeDOS on a 32-bit CPU.
They run FreeDOS in one window, and run other apps in other windows.
Yeah, this isn't really "multi-tasking DOS" but DOS wasn't really
designed with that in mind to begin with.

Also, the technical challenges of running DOS apps (which often take
control over the hardware) in a multi-tasking environment are very
steep.  I think this is another reason that FreeDOS32 hasn't really
taken off with the users and developers.  It just seems simpler to
stick to a single-task environment.

>I've been looking at Seal and BadSeal lately since
>you've mentioned it on your web site.  It looks pretty
>good to me, but I haven't tried it myself yet.  What
>do you think about this GUI?

See above.  I really like the look of SEAL.  I haven't used BadSEAL
myself, but I like the screenshots.

>Besides FreeDOS, what would you consider your favorite
>operating system?

Linux.  Hands down.

>There are several web browsers for DOS now that you
>can download.  What web browser do you recommend if
>you want to connect to the world wide web via DOS?  Do
>you know of any that support Java and JavaScript? 
>(I'm asking that because I've been looking for one.)

I don't browse the web from DOS, so this is a difficult question to
answer.  Certainly you can use Bobcat (DOS version of the UNIX "lynx"
browser) but this will give you a very plain, text-only experience.
Unfortunately, I don't know off-hand the names of other DOS browsers
that would provide a GUI browsing experience.  Sorry.

>Is there anything else you would like to tell people?

Just that FreeDOS is growing rapidly, and to stay tuned!

I've received a lot of positive email about the Beta5 distribution,
aside from the "freecom.log" problem.  A lot of people seem to think
that FreeDOS is ready for a "1.0" distribution.  I think we'll see
that in the next few months!

>Thank you very much, Jim, for taking the time out of
>your busy schedule to answer these questions.

You are welcome!  Always glad to talk about FreeDOS!