Jeffrey Needle wrote:
[SNIP]
Post by Jeffrey NeedleDirecting this to the freeware area, I wonder why companies don't just
release their old DOS programs as freeware? Some have, but there are
some who continue to deprive the freeware community of the software.
Two reasons spring immediately to mind - the first is that they simply
may *not* be able to do so, in most countries it is against the law for
a Board of Directors to do or allow anything which could be *perceived*
as losing money for the Company.
The second is a bit more convoluted, it may also be that the old,
creaky, slow, and limited in so many was DOS version is *too* limited to
be usable in the here-and-now.
Real example, based on $ware that I used to develop and still exists - I
was there from 1992 to 2000 (and still do the odd UNIX 'port for them),
when I started we had a 16-bit real-mode DOS version, on the way through
we developed (in order of my recall): 16/32-Bit 286 Protected Mode DOS;
32-bit 386 Extended Mode DOS; 32-Bit M88000 Motorola Sys-III and Sys-V
UNIX; 32-bit M88000 DG-UX; 32-bit HP-UX PA-RISC; 32-bit SCO
Xenix/UNIX/UNIXWARE/etcetera; 32/64-bit DEC Alpha OSF-1/Digital
UNIX/Tru64; 16-bit Windows 3.x; 16/32-bit OS/2; 32-bit Windows NT
Console mode; 32-bit Windows GUI mode; 32-bit x86 Linux (various);
32-bit Solaris x86; 32-bit AIX PowerPC; 32-bit SPARC ICL UNIX; 32-bit
Synix (Siemens-Nixdorf System V UNIX) MIPS; and no doubt others that
have fled my mind.
Let's ignore the UNIX and Linux variants, and stick to x86 MS and IBM OS's.
As soon as we released the 286 Protected Mode version, interest in the
plain old 16-bit Real Mode DOS version just died, although it was
demonstrably faster in the "add these two numbers together" sense, the
ability of the Protected Mode program to handle (for the day) incredibly
huge amounts of data made it the winner.
The 386 Extended Mode wasn't as much of hit, at the time the 80386 and
80486 chips were still expensive enough that few people could justify
the expense, and as for more than 4 Megabytes of memory, only the
*insanely* rich could afford that, so it wasn't important, and anyway,
Windows 3.x and OS/2 were becoming important.
Then, Windows NT arrived, a nice, stable, but expensive 32-bit
environment, then, suddenly we had Windows 95, a fairly stable but
definitely 32-bit and *definitely* cheap environment.
Yes, some people kept running the 286 Protected Mode version, until they
saw what the 32-bit Console Mode version was like, or their customers
demanded they shift to a full Windows GUI.
The 16-bit version can theoretically still be built, most of the code is
architecture neutral, but a lot of the features of the 32-bit variants
are simply not available due to memory constraints, Real Mode can *not*
address more than 1 Megabyte. (Okay, now some other old-timer will
start carrying on about LIMS memory and extended mode and so on, I have
*no* idea whether or not either mode still works on NT-based OS's; I
would assume they work on Win9x, *if* you can remember the incantations!!)
So, from Windows 95 on, anybody with any sense moved to either the
32-bit Console Mode or the 32-bit GUI version as soon as was
practicable, and the 16-bit version withered, simply because it was
*useless* in comparison.
So why allow a product that is badly limited in comparison to what else
is out there to escape, it's limitations can put your *other* products
at risk, in the following (classically a.c.f) sense:
"Company A have a free version of Product B that you can download,"
"What's it like?"
"Absolute crap, it's a 16-bit DOS/Win3.x version, don't touch *any* of
their other products, that's probably all that Products C, D, ... and Z
are, old stuff just tarted up to work on Windows XP/Vista."
So, to free an old version, you would have to be *absolutely* sure that
it wouldn't impact on your current range.
Cheers,
Gary B-)
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Armful of chairs: Something some people would not know
whether you were up them with or not
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