OpenDOS is a free MS-DOS-compatible operating system.
It is one name of CP/M-86, which is better known as Digital Research's DR-DOS. Around the time of the development of DR-DOS 6, Digital Research was acquired by Novell, who rebranded the product Novell DOS. The next version was marketed as Novell DOS 7.
The DOS product line was then sold off to a separate company, at that time known as Caldera Systems, owned by former Novell CEO Ray Noorda's investment firm The Canopy Group. Caldera renamed Novell DOS to OpenDOS and initiated a program of source code release, to link OpenDOS to Caldera's other OS, OpenLinux, a distribution of the Linux Unix-like OS.
Caldera released a free version of OpenDOS for non-commercial and evaluation use.
Only the source code to OpenDOS 7.02 remains available and the company took later development back in-house to product OpenDOS 7.03. However, this is still available for free download. It is more compatible with real MS-DOS than is the GPL FreeDOS, for example, and can run Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 as well or better than Microsoft's own product. Indeed, Caldera claimed that it had managed to get Windows 95 booting and running on top of OpenDOS in its internal labs, though this was never publically released.
Subsequently, the DOS and embedded Linux division of Caldera was spun off into a separate company, Lineo. Lineo realised that the old name of DR-DOS still had more market awareness than any of the other names and the product was given back its former monicker.
When Lineo was acquired by MetroWerks , the DOS product line was bought out by some of Lineo's former management, who formed a new company, DeviceLogics , to continue its development and marketing - see the article on DR-DOS for more information.
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Last updated: 08-20-2005 13:53:37
