> > 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 |
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