On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 3:25 PM Eric Auer <e.a...@jpberlin.de> wrote: >[..] > > I downloaded 4.2.a3 from the author's website > > http://www.diskman.co.uk/ and while there's no Readme > > file, running the program prints this notice: > > > >> Licensed to : ALPHA RELEASE. DO NOT DISTRIBUTE... > > The list of versions (on the website, viewed through > archive.org, as written) also suggests that, but how > about the most recent stable release 4.x instead then? >
The notice I copied into my last email was the output from the latest version on the Diskman website. If you visit http://www.diskman.co.uk/ you'll see there's only one version available to download. Here's the text from the website: > > Diskman4 (1999-2004) > > Diskman was a non-commercial DOS-based software project I > developed from 1999-2004. The last release was Diskman4. > > Diskman is no longer under development. The following downloads > are provided for historical reasons and are not provided with any > support. > > (icon) Diskman4.2(A3) Last Release > > If the website still is active, the software may > still be freeware for non-commercial, non-violent > use BUT shareware for the rest, which might be an > issue for fitting it into our licensing policies? > (Interesting that you say "non-violent use" .. I didn't see that in the license. Maybe you meant something else?) Yes, that would be an issue. While the license says that you "may be used freely for non-commercial purposes" it also says "may not be copied, distributed, modified, or incorporated within any product or service." That means we can't distribute it from Ibiblio. And including Diskman (with this license) in the FreeDOS distribution is a non-starter. We know that some people use FreeDOS commercially (for example, you can still buy new laptops and PCs that have FreeDOS pre-installed). Including Diskmam (with this license) in the distribution means commercial users cannot use this program. That would effectively "poison" FreeDOS for commercial users, which is not good. We used to include a few "closed source but free to use and distribute" programs in FreeDOS, but we've also been burned a few times by that. I don't want to go through that again. That's why I'm so focused that any future FreeDOS should only include open source software. Jim _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
