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As I pointed out the "uselessness" is a generalization, although perhaps your suggestion of use cases rather proves my point. Firstly "selling pcs without Wind

As I pointed out the "uselessness" is a generalization, although perhaps your suggestion of use cases rather proves my point. Firstly "selling pcs without Windows". If you want to sell a machine without windows feel free to ship it with Linux or indeed nothing. Yes, FreeDOS is an option, but it's not unique. Sure, some techs find it useful as a bare-metal hardware diagnostic tool. Presenting that micro niche as a use case kinda proves the point. (I'm not sure how FreeDOS fares with supporting new hardware but I'll assume it does. My experience with BSD doesn't make me over-optimistic though.) But I think you missed my point. The main utility of FreeDOS is FreeDOS. It doesn't need to be more than that.

transpute 2y ago
> feel free to ship it with Linux That requires the OEM to support Linux on the device. This has only been done for select devices, e.g. Dell XPS, and was a major undertaking. > Presenting that micro niche as a use case kinda proves the point Everything is a niche until you need it, e.g. installing a BIOS update from FreeDOS USB drive, without needing an OEM-certified Linux or Windows install for firmware distribution.
troad 2y ago
I don't think examples of FreeDOS being useful 'prove [your] point' about FreeDOS being useless. I think the word 'useless' is an overstatement that's very easy to quibble over, and which therefore gets in the way of you getting your overall point across. I think your overall point, ars gratia artis, is correct. People have a proclivity for trying to quantify the 'success' of OSS projects by virtue of user counts, use cases, etc, and yet all such measures are totally irrelevant for a non-profit project. There could be a single maintainer and a single user, and so long as they're both happy, the project is a success.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  I think FreeDOS shows why worrying about something being "useless" isn't so productive: it probably seemed somewhat "useless" at the time, but ended up being more useful to more people, and for a much longer time, than initially predicted. Did anyone predict that it would be so useful, decades later, for the tech-support use-cases it enjoys now?

transpute 2y ago

> feel free to ship it with Linux That requires the OEM to support Linux on the device. This has only been done for select devices, e.g. Dell XPS, and was a major undertaking. > Presenting that micro niche as a use case kinda proves the point Everything is a niche until you need it, e.g. installing a BIOS update from FreeDOS USB drive, without needing an OEM-certified Linux or Windows install for firmware distribution.

troad 2y ago

I don't think examples of FreeDOS being useful 'prove [your] point' about FreeDOS being useless. I think the word 'useless' is an overstatement that's very easy to quibble over, and which therefore gets in the way of you getting your overall point across. I think your overall point, ars gratia artis, is correct. People have a proclivity for trying to quantify the 'success' of OSS projects by virtue of user counts, use cases, etc, and yet all such measures are totally irrelevant for a non-profit project. There could be a single maintainer and a single user, and so long as they're both happy, the project is a success.

shiroiushi 2y ago
I think FreeDOS shows why worrying about something being "useless" isn't so productive: it probably seemed somewhat "useless" at the time, but ended up being more useful to more people, and for a much longer time, than initially predicted. Did anyone predict that it would be so useful, decades later, for the tech-support use-cases it enjoys now?