New maintainer wanted

[Luchezar Georgiev]

Hello!

There will probably not be any never versions from me past the current one
(8.00). If you know someone who can program in C and x86 Assembler and who
would like to take over the 4DOS maintenance, please ask him. If he agrees
please let me know, so that I can announce the change on my 4DOS site(s).

Even the accused to death have the right to a last wish. I think that I do
so too. My last wish is that 4DOS *never* falls into the hands of the only
FreeDOS developer left, Eric Auer. He has taken over too many projects and
I wouldn't like to see he takes over 4DOS too. I know his work rather well
so have my reasons to think so, but I wouldn't like to elaborate this here
- so, please just take my word, if you respect my opinion as a programmer.

Thanks to everybody who donated to support my 4DOS maintenance, and to all
the other people who have helped me!

Goodbye,
Lucho

[Jaelani]

do so too. My last wish is that 4DOS *never* falls into the hands of the
only FreeDOS developer left, Eric Auer. He has taken over too many

Eh? Has FreeDOS been abandoned already? It was much sooner than I
expected. I haven't visited the website recently, so I didn't know.

Thanks BTW, for keeping 4DOS alive quite a bit longer. I know this had
to happen sometime like any other projects. It's just that now is the
time. Hopefully, there'll be a maintainer or maybe several contributors
that only provide patches.


Regards,
Jaelani

[Luchezar Georgiev]

Post by Jaelani

do so too. My last wish is that 4DOS *never* falls into the hands of
the only FreeDOS developer left, Eric Auer. He has taken over too many

Eh? Has FreeDOS been abandoned already? It was much sooner than I
expected. I haven't visited the website recently, so I didn't know.

No, officially it's alive and well and version 1.1 has been prepared for
several months now. But in fact, only Eric Auer is left as a developer -
the rest of the developers have either gone or appear very sporadically.
There are exceptions but they maintain the packager, which isn't FreeDOS
per se. Incredible as it seems, only Eric Auer has left! James Hall will
start his masters degree education, so Eric Auer will take over even the
FreeDOS site, thus becoming Mr. FreeDOS :)

Post by Jaelani
Thanks BTW, for keeping 4DOS alive quite a bit longer. I know this had
to happen sometime like any other projects. It's just that now is the
time. Hopefully, there'll be a maintainer or maybe several contributors
that only provide patches.

Yes, hopefully. If you can program in C, you can take over if you want :)

Regards,
Lucho

[Sjouke Burry]

Post by Luchezar Georgiev
Hello!
There will probably not be any never versions from me past the current one
(8.00). If you know someone who can program in C and x86 Assembler and who
would like to take over the 4DOS maintenance, please ask him. If he agrees
please let me know, so that I can announce the change on my 4DOS site(s).
Even the accused to death have the right to a last wish. I think that I do
so too. My last wish is that 4DOS *never* falls into the hands of the only
FreeDOS developer left, Eric Auer. He has taken over too many projects and
I wouldn't like to see he takes over 4DOS too. I know his work rather well
so have my reasons to think so, but I wouldn't like to elaborate this here
- so, please just take my word, if you respect my opinion as a programmer.
Thanks to everybody who donated to support my 4DOS maintenance, and to all
the other people who have helped me!
Goodbye,
Lucho

Could you maybe put a zip file or some such with a complete
binary and/or sources in a place which might stay accessible
in the foreseeable future?
That at least would keep it safe from greedy individuals.
If so , thanks.
if not , thanks anyway. :)

[Luchezar Georgiev]

Post by Sjouke Burry
Could you maybe put a zip file or some such with a complete
binary and/or sources in a place which might stay accessible
in the foreseeable future?

There are already four such places: the main site and the mirrors listed at
http://4dos.hit.bg - both the complete binaries and the source code (in the
form of patches, with build instructions) are available on all the 4 sites.
Sometimes it happens that some of them goes down for some days, but so far,
it has never happened that ALL of them go down at the same time!

Post by Sjouke Burry
That at least would keep it safe from greedy individuals.

I have no idea whom you mean.

Post by Sjouke Burry
If so , thanks.
if not , thanks anyway. :)

You're welcome!

Regards,
Lucho

[Klaus Meinhard]

Lucho

Post by Luchezar Georgiev
There will probably not be any never versions from me past the
current one (8.00). If you know someone who can program in C and x86
Assembler and who would like to take over the 4DOS maintenance,
please ask him. If he agrees please let me know, so that I can
announce the change on my 4DOS site(s).

To help with reliability of downloads, I have created a 4DOS Source page
on my site (see sig). From this all necessary source files and
information can be downloaded too.

Post by Luchezar Georgiev
Thanks to everybody who donated to support my 4DOS maintenance, and
to all the other people who have helped me!

I think it's time we all thank you for your good work. 4DOS has made
many remarkable steps forward under your aegis. Let us all hope that
there will be a new maintainer with the your capabilities.

I will try to start a Sourceforge project for 4DOS. For this, I have
contacted Rex with a petition to clear up the 4DOS license ambiguities.
We'll see what ensues.

Since my site already collects the older 4DOS versions, I feel it is the
natural place to coordinate future versions until the Sorceforge project
is granted.

I hope this helps,

[Luchezar Georgiev]

Post by Klaus Meinhard
To help with reliability of downloads, I have created a 4DOS Source page
on my site (see sig). From this all necessary source files and
information can be downloaded too.

Good idea. I browsed it and it seems that all information and links on my
4DOS site is there. If you prefer, you can copy the old stuff (VC152.EXE,
MASM51.ZIP, the old Pascal tools and patches, etc., to your site, or just
archive them somewhere off-line, lest they vanish some day from Internet.

Post by Klaus Meinhard
I think it's time we all thank you for your good work. 4DOS has made
many remarkable steps forward under your aegis. Let us all hope that
there will be a new maintainer with the your capabilities.

I also thank you for your great ideas for 4DOS - your ISO date and Julian
time ideas which I could realise and other ideas that I couldn't realise.

Post by Klaus Meinhard
I will try to start a Sourceforge project for 4DOS. For this, I have
contacted Rex with a petition to clear up the 4DOS license ambiguities.
We'll see what ensues.

Besides the operating system restriction, a main obstacle for the 4DOS
licence to be certifiable by the OSI is its non-commercial use clause.
Maybe it is a good idea to add this to the relevant text at your site.
Undoubtedly, it'd be much easier and faster for Rex Conn to select any
"standard", OSI-certified licence than to waiting for the special 4DOS
licence to be certified by the OSI, which will take a long time, if it
happens at all. Another reason to choose a "standard" licence follows:

In order for Source forge to approve each new project application, they
require the applicant (as far as I remember) to select a licence from a
list of already existing licenses. These licences are a product of many
months of work from specialised lawyers. The GPL 3 for example needed 3
years of work to complete! Such a crazy legal world we are living in...

Post by Klaus Meinhard
Since my site already collects the older 4DOS versions, I feel it is the
natural place to coordinate future versions until the Sorceforge project
is granted.

I think that this granting is just a matter of some days or at most, weeks.
But whether future versions will come and when is a matter of unknown time,
from weeks to infinity. Let us see first, whether a new maintainer appears,
when this happens, and who this maintainer is. As a Bulgarian proverb says,
"The fish is still in the sea, and he puts the frying pan on the fire!" ;-)

Regards,
Lucho

[Klaus Meinhard]

Lucho,

Post by Luchezar Georgiev
Good idea. I browsed it and it seems that all information and links
on my 4DOS site is there. If you prefer, you can copy the old stuff
(VC152.EXE, MASM51.ZIP, the old Pascal tools and patches, etc., to
your site, or just archive them somewhere off-line, lest they vanish
some day from Internet.

I did that already, but did'nt put it online :-) Let the traffic go
there as long as possible :-)

Post by Luchezar Georgiev

Post by Klaus Meinhard
I will try to start a Sourceforge project for 4DOS. For this, I have
contacted Rex with a petition to clear up the 4DOS license
ambiguities. We'll see what ensues.

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