On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 5:41 PM Jim Hall <jh...@freedos.org> wrote: ... > > In the early DOS days, VDE was a shareware product, along with editors > > like Qedit. These days it's copyrighted freeware. Use it and pass it > > along all you like, but you can't get the source. > > > > So VDE isn't something you might want to mirror on Ibiblio, but it > > *is* something people might find worth running under *DOS. > > That's why I was asking (mirror on ibiblio).
That was my assumption. > I had remembered VDE from its shareware days. I had missed that it was > re-released as copyrighted freeware. (See below - highlights are mine.) > That's interesting - I'll have to try it again. It ceased generating actual revenue, so Eric's incentive to have it as shareware diminished. But it was fairly widely used, and he didn't want it to become the bane of shareware's existence - packages you had to register and pay for to get full value, but the authors have abandoned it and it *can't* be registered. Freeware it became. The last release in 2009 was a bugfix release, but it's mature enough that there weren't many bugs left to squash. If you want a WordStar style editor, and you can run it under real DOS or an emulator like DOSBox or vDOS Plus, grab it and use it. (I run it here on Win10 under vDOS Plus, but that's keeping my hand in. It's not my production editor or word processor.) > From the "About" page: > https://sites.google.com/site/vdeeditor/Home/about-vde > > > VDE started out as freeware; the DOS version switched to shareware > >(with licensing required for commercial use) from 1988 to 2002, and has > >since returned to freeware status. Even during its shareware period, VDE > >was released in fully functional form without nagging displays, and > >individual use was still freely allowed (a spelling-checker module was > >offered as an incentive for registration). VDE has been widely distributed > >by software libraries and online, and bundled with outdated computers for > >use by the disadvantaged. It's been my own most-used software for over 20 > >years, and my wish has always been that it should also be useful to as many > >others as possible. > > -- Eric Meyer (April 2009) > > Thanks for hosting the VDE website. This is a cool piece of history. I'm not technically hosting. The Home page is a Google Site and the mailing list is a Google group. I was simply in a position to make those happen. I was a VDE user in the DOS days, and it was something I believed should be preserved and made available. And I believe in preserving history and documenting how things got to their current state, so the early CP/M version, several DOS versions, and other things are there, available, and documented. You're quite welcome, and your response is a major reason why I did it. It provides value to folks who visit. There may not be a lot of them, but that's not the point of the exercise. (I also maintain the TextEditors.org site, that tries to list and document everything used as a text editor on a computing device (that may be a mainframe or a pocket calculator.) It's also low traffic, but I get occasional grateful emails from folks who discovered the site and found something that they wanted. I smile and say "My work here is done..." :-) ) > Jim ______ Dennis _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
