GNUish MSDOS Project @author{Francois Pinard} @author{last updated 2 Jul 1992}
Copyright (C) 1990, 91, 92 Free Software Foundation
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by Free Software Foundation.
You can retrieve a copy of this file by anonymous ftp from
`prep.ai.mit.edu' [18.71.0.38] in directory
`pub/gnu/MicrosPorts', as file `MSDOS.texi' for the
Texinfo source and file `MSDOS.info' for an Info
readable version.
Please help the community by kindly reporting all errors or omissions in this document; for doing so, email to `pinard@iro.umontreal.ca'. You might also want to contact other authors or contributors: a list of email addresses is given elsewhere in this document (see section Contributors Addresses).
GNUish MSDOS was first organized with small IBM PC's in mind, that is, 8088 and 80286 based systems. For 80386 or 80486 based systems, you should rather take a close look at DJ Delorie's works and derivatives; these ports have their own set of mailing lists and distribution points. See section cc, for more information. For OS/2 ports, people should follow the works of Kai Uwe Rommel and Eberhard Mattes; I've also heard that many OS/2 ports could be easily made usable under MSDOS with a special link step on OS/2.
This document is the work of various people, collected by Francois Pinard. The FSF disclaimer (see section Project Definition) is from Richard Stallman.
This document contains the following sections:
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is not directly interested in integrating or maintaining ports of GNU software to MSDOS, because of limited resources. These activities take time away from finishing a complete standalone GNU, which FSF and many in the GNU Project considers much more important.
However, the organized distribution of such ports started, a few years ago, under the name GNUish MSDOS project. The overall idea is to provide a GNU like environment for MSDOS, easy to get, and easy to install, as far as possible. It contains both MSDOS ports of GNU software, as well as MSDOS replacements for non-ported GNU software.
The GNUish MSDOS project wants to consider itself as part of the GNU project, rather than a mere aggregation of binaries. The non-GNU replacements are expected to somewhat comply with the GNU spirit and standards. Ideally, all code should be under the GNU General Public License, should try conforming to the GNU coding standards, and also be fully ANSI. The programs should be such that MSDOS users can be convinced of the virtues of free software!
The GNU General Public License article 3a) requires that the complete source code be available where programs are distributed in object code or executable form. For convenience, ready-to-execute binaries are also provided for those who do not have the necessary compilers, or do not feel like using them.
When several ports of the same tool exist, one of them has been selected for inclusion in this documentation. This does not means that the selected port is the best possible, it means however that the port seems to be good. Nobody should feel offended by any selection. Questions regarding the GNUish MSDOS project should be directed to the mailing list:
help-gnu-msdos@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
See section Project Mailing Lists, for how to subscribe.
The GNUish MSDOS project originated from Thorsten Ohl. It has been moderated by Thorsten from its beginning and for a long while.