Michael Robinson schreef: (...) > It is truly sad that Microsoft, since it doesn't support it's > dos versions of Word anymore, won't allow free redistribution > of it. The reality is, there are very few old computers left > that can only run dos, compared to the number of computers that > run Linux or Windows. (...) > Open office is too heavy for dos anyways. Any efforts to port > abiword to dos? How about producing an OSS clone of Windows > 3.11 or Windows 98SE? The advantage of doing the latter is > that the clone can be made to work with freedos instead of > the other way around. I have never felt that Windows NT > was a good replacement for dos based Windows. Microsoft > did a sloppy job, too many 9x programs want to be run as > administrator on an 2000/XP system. (...)
Most old computers that you would want to use for word processing, can run a lightweight Linux and Abiword. That could explain why nobody bothers to write/port a word processor for DOS. Anyway you really don't need a GUI at all when you have things like LaTeX. (...) > If people hand out illegal copies of software, it hurts > efforts to replace that software with something like open > office or ReactOS plus Open Office for example. Why bother > with free stuff if you can get commercial software without > paying for it? If the open source alternatives catch on, > the legal problems of pirating software go away. (...) And vice versa: if more illegal use of software is tracked down and punished, Software Libre will become more attractive. Remember the "Get Legal" campaign that OpenOffice.org did? I'm doing my little part: friends and family think that I'm their free service desk because I work in IT, but I simply refuse to help anyone with illegal software. The message is getting there: their usage of OpenOffice is increasing. Although that may also be because I was often able to repair a corrupt MS Office file with OpenOffice. "OpenOffice can fix files that MS Office can't!" Anyway, it's a bit off topic for a mailing list about FreeDOS. ;-) -- Amedee ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
