Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Microsoft - The Evil empire -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kal who wrote (31)	10/26/1997 9:18:00 AM
From: Jerry Heidtke	Respond to of 1600

A brief and incomplete recent history of DR-DOS: Novell bought DR-DOS from Digital Research a few years back. They enhanced it with multi-tasking and multi-threading, included the GEM desktop GUI, added better memory mangement (try 600+KB with all drivers and network software loaded), and bundled in the Personal NetWare product to give it peer-to-peer networking abilities. They were unable to market it successfully, because of Microsoft's (since outlawed) practice of requiring computer makers to pay MS a license fee for MS-DOS for every machine sold, whether it had MS-DOS on it or some other operating system. This inability to market Novell DOS also killed their project with Apple whereby they were going to produce a 32-bit version of DR-DOS with the Apple GUI interface that was able to run Windows applications. Novell has since sold the DOS product to a company called Caldera (www.caldera.com or www.caldera.co.uk), which is further enhancing the product and marketing it as OpenDOS, an OS for embedded controllers, thin Internet clients (they've also developed a browser that run on OpenDOS), and similar uses. Caldera is also suing Microsoft for antitrust, unfair practices, and monopolizing. Caldera has promised to make the source code for OpenDOS available to anyone, and OpenDOS may be used (modified or otherwise) without a license for any non-commercial use (i.e. your home computer). It is NOT freeware, public domain, shareware, or GPL. It is copyrighted by Caldera. You can download OpenDOS from the Caldera web site. Jerry

To: Kal who wrote (31)	10/26/1997 11:10:00 PM
From: Lady Lurksalot	Respond to of 1600

Hi Kal, No, Novell acquired DR DOS about the same time it acquired WordPerfect and effectively killed both products, as it did Unix. WordPerfect was rescued by Corel. DR DOS became Novell DOS and died a slow and painful death. Holly D. p.s. I just read Jerry Heidtke's post. His answer is correct and more complete than mine. As Corel rescued WordPerfect, Caldera indeed rescued DR DOS and brought it back to life. I downloaded OpenDOS some time ago from Caldera's website but have not yet tried it or compared its multitasking capabilities with DESQview.