DOS ain't dead

Not surprisingly, Dunfield's MICRO-C (and other tools) went out of business, and the complete package for the latest compiler version may be downloaded from here: http://www.dunfield.com/doswid/index.htm. Time for rr to update the links.

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Glory to God for all things

> Not surprisingly, Dunfield's MICRO-C (and other tools) went out of
> business, and the complete package for the latest compiler version may be
> downloaded from here: http://www.dunfield.com/doswid/index.htm.
> Time for rr to update the links.

Thanks, I didn't know this site. I found some useful utilities there.

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> Not surprisingly, Dunfield's MICRO-C (and other tools) went out of
> business, and the complete package for the latest compiler version may be
> downloaded from here: http://www.dunfield.com/doswid/index.htm.
> Time for rr to update the links.

I've added just a small link named "(much more)" to the compiler section. Thanks!

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Forum admin

> Not surprisingly, Dunfield's MICRO-C (and other tools) went out of
> business, and the complete package for the latest compiler version may be
> downloaded from here: http://www.dunfield.com/doswid/index.htm.
> Time for rr to update the links.

I don't know what happened. Not sure he really went out of business, just switched to consulting. IIRC, he already allowed the "lite" version (no srcs) as freeware but never bundled (as separate .ZIP) anything newer than 3.21. In other words, I had emailed him and he said the "lite" version of 3.23 was freeware (which email I then forwarded to rr about two or three years ago). He was charging $25 for the "full" version, last I checked, among other target versions (non-x86 embedded processors).

Yes, he started posting on comp.os.msdos.programmer recently, which is how I also noticed he had "free"'d the compiler, but I never bothered trying it, it was too raw for me. I just wasn't comfortable with it. It's a very nice toolset for tiny things, but it's kinda limited in abilities. (In other words, it doesn't even half replace OpenWatcom 16-bit support.)

From what I've read, at one time he was offering the full suite (with sources) to FreeDOS gratis, for redistribution, but he wanted control over it. He didn't want the .ZIP to be modified without his permission, and he wanted the ability to change files without notice. (Please don't get mad at Jim Hall here.) Jim is a GPL zealot, seriously, he's (semi-correctly) obsessed with the "four freedoms", mainly so that nothing comes back to bite him or us. Well, no surprise, since these restrictions weren't GPL friendly, Jim just turned Micro-C away. (Though an older version with sources is still on iBiblio, oddly enough, but mostly because nobody complained, very very few FTP admins exist, nobody keeps those files up, etc.)

Very very few FreeDOS things use Micro-C anyways, maybe something old by Stefan Kaiser, but I forget exactly.

Yeah, I'm honestly NOT trying to stir up anything here, just offering a few (boring) facts for completeness. :-/

EDIT: For the record, being included in FreeDOS proper isn't the same as mirroring on iBiblio. So Jim has indeed thrown lots of stuff on iBiblio that isn't quite GPL friendly. But the true FreeDOS, esp. "BASE", he has been very protective of. (He got promoted at work, got his masters??, moved, but now two years later he's barely back rewriting the installer. I think Pat's still in charge, though, but he's swamped with work, like most [except me]. I haven't really heard any important plans lately, but I'm not exactly the most important person, to say the least.)

> Jim is a GPL zealot, seriously, he's (semi-correctly)
> obsessed with the "four freedoms", mainly so that nothing comes back to
> bite him or us.

Pffft. I just don't understand GPL zealots. (As developer) I want the fifth freedom too: source free of the GPL ;)

> (Though an older version with
> sources is still on iBiblio, oddly enough, but mostly because nobody
> complained, very very few FTP admins exist, nobody keeps those files up,
> etc.)

Does the license that this version was offered under grant the right for usage and redistribution indefinitely, or did it allow the author to retract these rights? In the latter case, even though (as user) I don't care as much about freedoms, I would agree that this license then wasn't particularly attractive. If the former is true, however, then there can't be anything wrong with mirroring this older version.

---
l

> Does the license that this version was offered under grant the right for
> usage and redistribution indefinitely, or did it allow the author to
> retract these rights? In the latter case, even though (as user) I don't
> care as much about freedoms, I would agree that this license then wasn't
> particularly attractive. If the former is true, however, then there can't
> be anything wrong with mirroring this older version.

Here's what it says (vaguely edited):

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/c/micro-c/mc315pc.txt

> This MICRO-C/PC package is FREE. You may use it as long as you like without > payment. If however, you would like to support me in my efforts to develop > MICRO-C for the PC, a $25 "registration" fee would be appreciated.
>
> This MICRO-C "package" (software and documentation) is copyrighted,
> and all rights to it are reserved. Permission is granted to
> distribute ORIGINAL UNMODIFIED copies ONLY of the MC???PC.ZIP archive
> via BBS and disk copying services. MICRO-C is provided on an "as is"
> basis, with no warranty of any kind. In no event shall the author be
> liable for any damages arising from its use or distribution.

That's all I know because I wasn't involved in the first dispute. So I don't know anything extra without asking Jim or Dave personally (which I'm a bit hesitant to do). I guess I could (re)search the mailing list archives.

Anyways, it's not listed under "DEVEL" in the FreeDOS Software List. But it is mirrored on iBiblio (like a lot of other stuff not in "official" FreeDOS). But like I said, they (barely) have three people administering FTP for them, and I'm not sure any of those have been active lately (heavily doubt it).

In short, use the newest one, read what it says, I dunno.

> > Jim is a GPL zealot, seriously, he's (semi-correctly)
> > obsessed with the "four freedoms", mainly so that nothing comes back to
> > bite him or us.
>
> Pffft. I just don't understand GPL zealots. (As developer) I want the fifth
> freedom too: source free of the GPL ;)

It's mostly that you can avoid that an old contributor retracts his sources when he is disgruntled with it, and you spend more time deleting his stuff, and working around the gaps then that he contribute in the first place.

With the GPL you avoid that, since they explicitely grant you a perpetual license.

Of course GPL is a weapon of mass destruction for some business interests, but I don't see how that would hurt something like FreeDOS.

> > Not surprisingly, Dunfield's MICRO-C (and other tools) went out of
> > business, and the complete package for the latest compiler version may
> be
> > downloaded from here:
> http://www.dunfield.com/doswid/index.htm.
> > Time for rr to update the links.
>
> I don't know what happened. Not sure he really went out of business, just
> switched to consulting. IIRC, he already allowed the "lite" version (no
> srcs) as freeware but never bundled (as separate .ZIP) anything newer than
> 3.21. In other words, I had emailed him and he said the "lite" version of
> 3.23 was freeware (which email I then forwarded to rr about two or three
> years ago). He was charging $25 for the "full" version, last I checked,
> among other target versions (non-x86 embedded processors).
>
> Yes, he started posting on comp.os.msdos.programmer recently, which is how
> I also noticed he had "free"'d the compiler, but I never bothered trying
> it, it was too raw for me. I just wasn't comfortable with it. It's a very
> nice toolset for tiny things, but it's kinda limited in abilities. (In
> other words, it doesn't even half replace OpenWatcom 16-bit support.)
>
> From what I've read, at one time he was offering the full suite (with
> sources) to FreeDOS gratis, for redistribution, but he wanted control over
> it. He didn't want the .ZIP to be modified without his permission, and he
> wanted the ability to change files without notice. (Please don't get mad at
> Jim Hall here.) Jim is a GPL zealot, seriously, he's (semi-correctly)
> obsessed with the "four freedoms", mainly so that nothing comes back to
> bite him or us. Well, no surprise, since these restrictions weren't GPL
> friendly, Jim just turned Micro-C away. (Though an older version with
> sources is still on iBiblio, oddly enough, but mostly because nobody
> complained, very very few FTP admins exist, nobody keeps those files up,
> etc.)
>
> Very very few FreeDOS things use Micro-C anyways, maybe something old by
> Stefan Kaiser, but I forget exactly.
>
> Yeah, I'm honestly NOT trying to stir up anything here, just offering a few
> (boring) facts for completeness. :-/
>
> EDIT: For the record, being included in FreeDOS proper isn't the same as
> mirroring on iBiblio. So Jim has indeed thrown lots of stuff on iBiblio
> that isn't quite GPL friendly. But the true FreeDOS, esp. "BASE", he has
> been very protective of. (He got promoted at work, got his masters??,
> moved, but now two years later he's barely back rewriting the installer. I
> think Pat's still in charge, though, but he's swamped with work, like most
> [except me]. I haven't really heard any important plans lately, but I'm not
> exactly the most important person, to say the least.)

Hello Everybody,

I've just stumbled on this thread, and would like to make some "for the
record" comments:

DDS has NOT "gone out of business" - and I wouldn't really say I've "switched
to consulting" as contract firmware development is what I've always done -
for a time I made my in-house tools available as products, however the
divergence of commercially available host platforms from my ideals brought
me to the decision not to continue maintaining commercial releases. I still
maintain the tools internally, and continue to support my customers. I still
offer the tools for sale to those who need support. For everyone else I've
made pre-installed .ZIPs available on my site for free.

Micro-C is not about "big" - it is about "little". The compiler was originally
developed for small (8 bit) embedded systems (where 4K is a lot), never for
large 32-bit platforms. Even so, Micro-C for the PC is surprisingly powerful
and most of my in-house tools and other PC/DOS projects were developed using
it (it can even self compile). It includes many nice add-ons, such as in-line
assembly, TSR functions, serial comms, text-windowing, forms, graphics,
sprites and a lot more. Add to that the fact that useful utilities developed
in MCPC tend to be smaller than many other toolsets startup code, and you
have a very useful tool for DOS system development.

The executable PC version of Micro-C has always been free, including a full
license to distribute the output code free of restriction. A "registered"
version with LOTs of example source code (well over 100 programs) was $25
if you felt so inclined. This example source library is now available free
from my site as well.

Regarding the FreeDOS incident - I knew FreeDOS had some utilities developed
with MCPC (which I was fine with, as I wished to support the FreeDOS project),
however I noticed that they distributed a pre-installed modified version of
my tools with defaults overridden which was at odds with my documentation (I
became aware of this after fielding questions from confused users). I asked
them to please post my original unmodified distribution, and also offered to
make a custom distribution for them if for some reason my distribution was
unsuitable, however their response was to remove it from their files. I feel
that this was unfortunate because MCPC is ideally suited for development of
small system utilities. At no time did I demand or request additional
control or ability to "change files without notice".

Finally... in recent months, I've been slowly dredging up and posting some
of the other DOS in-house tools and projects that I've developed over the
years. Some of these may be of interest to members of this forum. They range
from trivial utilities to complex applications, and can be found at:
www.dunfield.com/doswid/index.htm
These will also show you the kinds of things that MCPC can do - almost
everything on that page was developed and built with Micro-C/PC.

Regards,
Dave

> Hello Everybody,
>
> I've just stumbled on this thread, and would like to make some "for the
> record" comments:

Please do, my horrible interpretation was from an outsider's view, admittedly flawed.

> divergence of commercially available host platforms from my ideals brought
> me to the decision not to continue maintaining commercial releases.

Win64 hates DOS. Vista 32-bit wasn't much better.

> I still offer the tools for sale to those who need support.
> For everyone else I've made pre-installed .ZIPs available on my
> site for free.

Cool, thanks.

> Micro-C is ... a very useful tool for DOS system development.

Indeed, sorry to (accidentally) trivialize it. I've used it for two (very small) utils of mine due to its virtues of small size, 8086+, easy to use. The problems come into play when you need "longint" (workarounds exist but non-standard) or bigger models than tiny or small. In other words, harder to port existing code than write from scratch (obviously??). Expecting it to work with big things like the FreeDOS kernel ("compact") is too much. But for normal stuff, it's great.

> Regarding the FreeDOS incident ...

I know, they are control freaks. I wish they'd (finally) allocate some more freakin' FTP admins for iBiblio's mirror, but they haven't. Jim has been (mostly) a decent head honcho, so I won't complain, not even a little, but I know some people had their disagreements with him over the years. Like I said, he's been "away" for two years but is back rewriting the installer. Pat's in charge now but haven't heard much (of worth) lately. It's pretty heavily hibernating, almost dead you could say, but it still exists.

Long story short, feel free to (re)contact Pat now as I'm pretty sure he'd be up for hosting MCPC somewhere in whatever manner you see fit.

> Finally... in recent months, I've been slowly dredging up and posting some
> of the other DOS in-house tools and projects that I've developed over the
> years. Some of these may be of interest to members of this forum. They
> range
> from trivial utilities to complex applications, and can be found at:
> www.dunfield.com/doswid/index.htm
> These will also show you the kinds of things that MCPC can do - almost
> everything on that page was developed and built with Micro-C/PC.

"A poor carpenter blames his tools" ... yeah, well, I'm not half the carpenter you are! So thanks, DOS nerds like us need all the help we can get!

> Not surprisingly, Dunfield's MICRO-C (and other tools) went out of
> business, and the complete package for the latest compiler version may be
> downloaded from here: http://www.dunfield.com/doswid/index.htm.
> Time for rr to update the links.

Relocated to http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/dos/index.htm

BTW thanks MICRO-C I can have a TAR file unpacker in < 2560 bytes.
http://roy.orz.hm/gpc/files1.rt/detar-mc.zip