The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project

Alas, the copyright holders are not likely to change the licence.
Some time ago, the complete OpenDOS source code was rediscovered by
one of those who had been granted access to it in 1996. The reaction
to his attempt to even get the permission to release it under the
original OpenDOS licence was disappointing, though. It seems like
DRDOS, Inc. or whatever they call themselves now regard the opening
of the DR-DOS source code as the biggest mistake they ever made, and
view any developer working on it who is not under strict NDA as a
threat to their investments. So I am afraid that the original
licence and the kernel files is all we can ever hope to get.

The only way to overcome this obstacle would be to gradually replace
the old proprietary code with new one. I have started to adapt some
of the FreeDOS tools to work with Enhanced DR-DOS, but there are
things that do not exist for FreeDOS simply because they are
DR-DOS-specific, e.g. DELWATCH/DELPURGE. I also plan to rewrite
parts of the kernel, but that is something that certainly will not
be done in 2010.

Currently, however, the problem is not lack of openness of the
source code - there are lots of tasks available that do not directly
involve the kernel source code - but rather lack of developers.
For example, FreeDOS is as open as it can possibly get, yet it has
the same problems as EDR-DOS.

In 2010, I plan to finish work on v7.01.08, so I can continue
working on more interesting stuff again. Maybe that will also
attract more developers.