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from the Why-not-call-it-the-Open-Sea-Shell? dept.
GEOS is getting a fifth shot at life, as the 1990s DOS shell—despite the name, it is not an OS, in the strictest sense of the term—has been released as an open source project under the Apache 2.0 license by new owner blueway.Softworks.
Releasing PC/GEOS as open source came with significant hurdles, considering how often the platform changed hands. “After Frank S. Fischer, the former owner and long time GEOS enthusiast passed away, I worked with Breadbox's former CTO John Howard and Frank’s wife, as the new owner, to acquire the rights to give PC/GEOS a future and a new home,” Falk Rehwagen, former Breadbox employee and owner of new rights holder blueway.Softworks, told TechRepublic. “There always was the vision to make the technology available to the community to enable further developments, make it a living and developable system.”
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-pcgeos-found-a-5th-life-as-an-open-source-dos-shell/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:57AM
I bought GeoWorks instead of Windows for my 386 back in the day. The evil empire won out in the long run, but I don't regret the purchase; it was easily superior to Windows. I still miss it over current OSes for one big reason: the UI wasn't the fugly flat mess we're stuck with today.
I've still got my GeoWorks and GeoWorks Pro manuals and disks and would love to fire it up in a VM, but the hardware, even virtual, is too advanced. If somebody gets this FreeGeoWorks up and running, I'll definitely take a look at it.