Re: Commercial use of FreeDOS

> - Would the GPL allow us to install FreeDOS on our units, without 
> modification, and use it to run our proprietary embedded software?

Yes. FreeDOS ist free (as in speech), and free (as beer).
You may even distribute a modified version of it, as long as
you give everybody else the possibility to get the source 
for your changes, too. read - you may not 'privatize' some mofifications.

> - As far as a I can see, all the FreeDOS distributions are described as 
> "Betas".  To my mind this implies the possible presence of bugs.  What 
> would be the most reliable FreeDOS version for us, considering that we 
> are primarily using the kernel, not the utilities? 

the FreeDOS kernel is about as close an approximation to MSDOS as DRDOS;
although your application has a chance of probably 98% to work out of the
box, you must test it on FreeDOS, as you would on DRDOS (or any other DOS 
other then MSDOS).

I don't know of any 'unstability' of FreeDOS - if your applikation runs, it
will probably
run until shutdown.

FreeDOS is named 'Beta', because some part of it (kernel, command) are 
production quality, some other (scandisk,...) are simply junk.
as an embedded project, you should know, that there have been reports,
that CTTY COM1 is working only partly.

> What would be the most reliable FreeDOS version for us

download the most recent kernel (ke2027rc), as each new kernel has 
usually some bug fixed. also, should you file a bug report, it's a nuisance
to the
developers if you didn't test against the most recent kernel.
chances are good, that the bug has already been removed.




> And also keeping in 
> mind that we don't need any advanced capabilities such as extended 
> memory support. 
extended memory support should be rock stable. you don't have to use it,
though DOS=HIGH and the XMS-SWAPPING command give you ~120K 
more usable memory.

>(We would like to use disks > 512 MB though.)
shouldn't be a problem, either.

> - If we contribute money to the FreeDOS project, where does it go?
nice you asked :-))))
and should be answered by j.hall, project coordinator.

additionally, you may of course make personal deals with the developers
to fix a problem, or implement a missing feature ASAP - that's called
'support'

good luck with it

tom