Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   xianc78@gameliberty.club's status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 09:01:33 JST xianc78

   In the eyes of an extreme freetard, playing an old DOS or NES game is no different than using Windows 11, Discord, or Google Chrome.

   • ✙ dcc :pedomustdie: :phear_slackware: likes this.
   • 翠星石 repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 09:05:49 JST iced depresso

     in reply to
     @xianc78 also forgetting it hasn't been built on top of DOS since NT lol
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 10:22:29 JST pistolero

     in reply to
     @xianc78 Did you want a person at "free software extremist dot com" to suggest MS-DOS?
     
     Here's a FreeDOS boot floppy.
     freedos-floppy.img
     ✙ dcc :pedomustdie: :phear_slackware: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     xianc78@gameliberty.club's status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 10:27:26 JST xianc78

     in reply to

     • pistolero

     @p They will reject FreeDOS because most people use it to play old, proprietary DOS games.

     pistolero likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 10:29:39 JST pistolero

     in reply to
     @xianc78 You can play the DOS port of Nethack. https://nethack.org/v343/ports/download-msdos.html
   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 16:22:29 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @xianc78 All of the named software is proprietary.
     
     Old MS-DOS or NES games at least don't contain spyware and the digital handcuffs are now ineffective, but that software still doesn't respect your freedom.
     
     It is a fact that that the Dirty Operating System was hot garbage from the start.
   • Embed this notice
     the_daikon_warfare (sicp@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 16:22:36 JST the_daikon_warfare

     in reply to

     • 翠星石
     @xianc78 Proprietary coward went out of his way to screenshot the post, lest he incur @Suiseiseki 's wrath.
     翠星石 likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Jan-2025 16:26:23 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • pistolero
     @xianc78 @p The main problem of "FreeDOS" is that you can't compile it without a proprietary compiler.
     
     I'm not too confident about the licensing situation, but it appears that it could be free software.
     
     The primary and only practical usage of "FreeDOS" is in fact the execution of old proprietary DOS software.
     pistolero likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 08:03:17 JST pistolero

     in reply to

     • 翠星石
     @Suiseiseki @xianc78
     
     > you can't compile it without a proprietary compiler.
     
     I wouldn't know; DOSBox solves enough of my problems.
     
     I attempted to figure out what it uses but they have no documentation for this in the repo, just a script that wants to run as root and six levels of indirection. (Their build system alone appears to be much larger than any version of DOS from the DOS era.) I have a subversion checkout of it from 2009 (if you believe the timestamps) and subtracting sixteen years of bloat makes it a little easier to decipher: it looks like they have written portions of FreeDOS in C++ and they want TurboC++ for it, but I can't say for certain without solving the halting problem whether it is possible to use GCC for this. (Probably not worth the effort, because it's a C++ project: it's shit.)
     
     > I'm not too confident about the licensing situation,
     
     MIT.
     
     > The primary and only practical usage of "FreeDOS" is in fact the execution of old proprietary DOS software.
     
     If you think it is difficult to port FreeDOS to use GCC instead of TurboC++, it should be easy to acknowledge that it might be difficult to port even free software written for DOS to a more recent operating system.
     
     Free software written for DOS does exist. Some people use DOS as a bootloader! There were Linux distributions that did this, Chuck Moore did it for Forth environments, etc.
     
     That aside, I don't see any issues with using the computer to investigate older computers and older software; I don't know why you'd object to this.
   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 15:46:01 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • pistolero
     @p @xianc78 >DOSBox solves enough of my problems.
     Yes, even if you intend to surrender your freedom to proprietary games, DOSBox usually offers a better experience.
     
     >MIT.
     Which one? MIT released many licenses.
     
     Just slapping a copy of MIT expat into a repo doesn't really mean anything legally.
     
     >it might be difficult to port even free software written for DOS to a more recent operating system.
     I reckon it'll be easier to port DOS C free software than to get sepples to compile.
     
     >Free software written for DOS does exist.
     Please provide examples.
     
     >Some people use DOS as a bootloader!
     I don't see why you would do that instead of using the superior GNU GRUB.
     
     >I don't see any issues with using the computer to investigate older computers and older software
     There is mere investigation (you'll soon realize garbage it is and stop using it) and there is surrendering freedom to proprietary software.
     pistolero likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 15:47:27 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • vulonkaaz v3.1
     @vulonkaaz @xianc78 You have no freedom if you can't even choose to be free.
     
     If you do not commit theft and murder with the help of a boat, you are not a pirate.
   • Embed this notice
     vulonkaaz v3.1 (vulonkaaz@v2.flyingcube.tech)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 15:47:28 JST vulonkaaz v3.1

     in reply to
     @xianc78 the irony of "free" software, people restricting their own freedom cause they become absolutely obsessed with software licensing and copyright
     
     
     that's why i'm a pirate
     GNU+ullard repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Thursday, 16-Jan-2025 15:47:53 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • 翠星石
     • pistolero
     @p @xianc78 *how garbage
     pistolero likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 02:58:48 JST pistolero

     in reply to

     • 翠星石
     @Suiseiseki @xianc78
     
     > Which one? MIT released many licenses.
     
     The one commonly called "the MIT license".
     
     > Just slapping a copy of MIT expat into a repo doesn't really mean anything legally.
     
     The author grants a license; if the author says a license is the public license, that's the license the author has granted.
     
     > I reckon it'll be easier to port DOS C free software than to get sepples to compile.
     
     Yeah, but although with Unix there's some amount of pressure (provided by the APIs available to developers) to use C, there was no such pressure with DOS. People used assembly half the time, people wrote code in random dialects of Pascal. On top of that, the "API" half the time was "write to video memory" or "trigger this BIOS interrupt". It's not easy to translate, even if it's C code.
     
     > Please provide examples.
     
     Impulse Tracker is BSD-licensed now. It's written in assembly, so porting is effectively a rewrite. I think you probably know this, but tools for composing music or drawing, people get attached to them, they're not easy to replace.
     
     > I don't see why you would do that instead of using the superior GNU GRUB.
     
     Well, aside from GRUB not having existed for a long time, if I had to pick a bootloader, I'd pick DOS before picking GRUB.
     
     > There is mere investigation (you'll soon realize garbage it is and stop using it)
     
     Well, of course it's all garbage: most DOS software doesn't even have resource-sharing via 9P. But people have put a lot of effort into SIMH, for example. It's difficult to tell if you've ported something competently without being able to run the old version.
   • Embed this notice
     Phantasm (phnt@fluffytail.org)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 03:24:53 JST Phantasm

     in reply to

     • 翠星石
     • pistolero
     @Suiseiseki @p @xianc78
     >>The main problem of "FreeDOS" is that you can't compile it without a proprietary compiler.
     >https://www.freedos.org/about/devel/
     >https://github.com/FDOS/kernel/blob/master/build.bat#L10
     >https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS/base/fdisk/-/blob/master/SOURCE/FDISK/Makefile (OpenWatcom)
     >https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS/base/fdisk/-/blob/master/SOURCE/FDISK/Makefile.gcc (I16 Gcc)
     >OpenWatcom (OSI approved, ie not proprietary)
     >NASM (BSD 2-clause, ie not proprietary)
     Again, you don't even know what you are talking about.
     pistolero likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 03:28:19 JST pistolero

     in reply to

     • 翠星石
     • Phantasm
     @phnt @Suiseiseki @xianc78
     
     > OSI approved
     
     Okay but the OSI is a shit-man place and the license does suck: https://opensource.org/license/sybase-php
   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 06:46:07 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • vulonkaaz v3.1
     software freedom is not about copyright and licensing, that's a view that a dissidence set out ot promote but it's not ours. copyrights over software are but one of the powers by which others attempt to trap us and control us through the software we use. copyright licensing can be means to relinquish those powers, but all software users have to be watchful for other ways others may gain power over us through our computing. choosing to be oblivious to traps that can take away your freedom is not as clever as you seem to portray
     翠星石, GNU+ullard and tyil and 3 others like this.
   • Embed this notice
     Phantasm (phnt@fluffytail.org)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 09:07:26 JST Phantasm

     in reply to

     • 翠星石
     • pistolero
     @p @Suiseiseki @xianc78 It does suck, but it's still better than being source-available. The worst part of is probably the requirement to publish your modified source even when used privately. It's not FSF approved, because they disagreed with that part of the license.
     pistolero likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     pistolero (p@fsebugoutzone.org)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 09:08:14 JST pistolero

     in reply to

     • 翠星石
     • Phantasm
     @phnt @Suiseiseki @xianc78 Yeah, I wouldn't call it free, but it is open-source.
   • Embed this notice
     GNU+ullard (ullard@shitposter.world)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 09:22:54 JST GNU+ullard

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva
     • vulonkaaz v3.1
     @lxo @vulonkaaz Software licensing is boring finicky and frustrating, but we have to care because that is the best we've got to preserve freedom, the actual aim
     翠星石 likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 17-Jan-2025 15:40:19 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • Phantasm
     • pistolero
     @p @phnt @xianc78 Yes, the "OSI" has approved multiple proprietary licenses, as they happen to meet the looser 10 requirements.