From: "M. Schulter" Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: Future of DJGPP: FreeDOS32? Date: 21 Apr 1999 04:26:47 GMT Organization: Value Net Internetwork Services Inc. Lines: 31 Message-ID: <7fjk27$hj4$4@vnetnews.value.net> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: value.net X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 unoff BETA 970901; i386 BSD/OS 2.1] To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Hello, and having considered this theme over the last couple of years, please let me try and make the case for a cautious approach. Trying as best I can to place myself in the position of DJ or Eli or any of the many others who have indeed made DJGPP a premier "partially POSIX" environment for DOS, what I'd like to say is that designing a 32-bit OS is a nontrivial task, especially if that OS is supposed to work reliably. (One can debate whether commercial developers have always met that standard, as has been pointed out, for example, CWSDPMI can catch pointer bugs that commercial DPMI servers may miss.) An OS simply isn't something to take for granted, and as responsible developers the DJGPP team individually and collectively knows this probably as well as anyone. Unlike many commercial vendors, they have contact with the users and provide free technical support on a day to day basis right here: and many articles and sigs here testify to their excellence. What I'd like to say is that regardless of what happens on the "DOS32" issue, this team has already scored an immense triumph by making good old DOS16 an environment for 32-bit applications ranging from Emacs to TeX to something as simple and delightful as gdate. Maybe whether the 32-bit support is part of the OS itself or of a separate DJGPP environment isn't as important as the fact that the choice is there. Most respectfully, Margo Schulter mschulter AT value DOT net