Beta vs. Stable

Hi all,

I just wanted to say a few words about this beta vs. 1.0 stable stuff.
Some time ago it was myself who started/proposed a discussion about what 
features that should define a FreeDOS 1.0 release. There were many mails 
and a lot of dicussion about this, people contributed, I did a poll, and 
published the results.
Three comments on this.

(1) Years later I have to say that the wishes which at that moment 
believed to be essential and neccessary (maybe sufficient?) for a 
hypothetical FreeDOS "1.0" seem to have been fullfilled already. I just 
remember that these wishes were
a) Patch some kernel bugs/problems which at that moment seemed critical, 
and that nowadays seem disappeared, such as problems with the 
redirector, with "MCB chain corrupt", and with FILES=.
b) FORMAT not correctly working on HDs (I don't know about the status of 
this, but I seem to recall that it may be ok except for some occasional 
problems?)
c) Problems with SYS and different floppy sizes
d) Stabilise the XMS driver (FDXMS)

In addition, some of the problems that were not so clearly (or 
majoritarily) believed to be critical have been also 
implemented/patched, such as: LBA support in the kernel, and the EMM 
(almost finished except for the lack of VCPI), unlike the lack of 
CHKDSK, that isn't yet solved. (Furthermore, everybody believed that 
FAT32 support in the kernel wasn't needed for 1.0 at all, but we have 
that now :))

(2) Maybe too optimistically I tried to collect all the wishes from 
everybody, that's what I did with the poll. But although all the wishes 
above fullfilled, I give up to claim what 1.0 could be, as I consider 
this is (of course!) not up to myself.
I just consider these millestones were important, and have been 
fullfilled. I still think it is a good idea to have some sort of "state 
of the art", and set of the most critical and interesting milestones, 
and I was precisely considering reviewing this at this moment.
But I just wanted to say that I no longer consider this a "todo for 
1.0", but as a "what's hot!", mainly based on the users feedback that 
come to my mailbox, and that I read either in this mailing list or the 
web. I am not going to say anything on this in this email.

(3) But appart from this "state of the art", I have my own personal 
opinion on the 1.0, that you may share or maybe you don't. I am probably 
missing something important too. Of course, I am not 
pointing/criticising/etc when giving this opinion.
The system has incrediblely improved lately. However, If I were a user 
knowing nothing about FreeDOS, and saw "1.0", that's what I would expect 
from it, but that we don't have:
(a)  SCANDISK, CHKDSK or some other (16-bit) disk checking tool, as I 
consider this to be a "legacy" feature of any DOS
(b)  If a kernel FAT32 capable is offered, I would expect that FDISK is 
also FAT32 capable
(c) I would expect that I can use both UMBs and DPMI without relying on 
external drivers (namely UMBPCI) that are not distributed with the system
(d) I would expect that FreeCOM has all the basic commandline 
compatibility with MS-COMMAND, namely /On and /An to be implemented
Out of this, the system looks enough to me...

Aitor