[arachne] Marketability of DOS software (was Re: Adobe swings and misses as PDF abuse worsens)

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

> Since DOS programs *will* run in Windoze, turning out a functional DOS
> program makes sense.

No, it doesn't because there is no point in compiling a program for
DOS if it is to be run only in Windows. Making it a DOS executable
only makes sense if one assumes that it would be run in DOS, otherwise
it is best to make it a native Windows executable.

> Changing it to run in 'doze would *not* be that
> difficult, as long as you stuck to using
> what was designed into the
> progam and avoided depending upon all the built-in snit MS
> includes in
> its OSes.

But it would mean additional work without any added benefit to them.

Mind that these companies do not consider the added bonus of DOS
compatibility since they do not even consider the possibility that
someone is using DOS. To them, DOS (if they ever heard of it) is an OS
that ceased to exist many years ago, and all of its *former* users
either stopped using it or also ceased to exist.

Nothing they find in the market analyzes they base their assumptions
on indicates that DOS is still being sold, let alone that it has a
significant market share, and this is the only thing they need to know
about it. They are not interested in open source versus closed source
or in numbers of anonymous downloads, they are only interested in the
number of people who pay for something. Only if somebody is willing to
pay for his OS he is in their target group; pennyless freeloaders do
not count.

If somebody who reads this feels insulted by these words, I apologize,
but before flaming me please consider how much money you have been
spending on DOS upgrades in the last few years. Multiply this by the
estimated number of DOS users and compare this to similar numbers for
Windows, and you have a good assessment of the market share of DOS,
and thus the potential interest of companies in developing software
for it.

Regards,

Udo

-- The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project - http://www.drdosprojects.de

-- This mail was written by a user of The Arachne Browser - http://arachne.cz/
                  Arachne at FreeLists                  
-- Arachne, The Premier GPL Web Browser/Suite for DOS --

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