In the wake of its anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp (CI No 2,963), Provo, Utah-based Caldera Inc has made its OpenDOS alternative to the MS-DOS operating system freely available on the Internet to non-commercial developers. OpenDOS 7.0 is based on the DOS 7 techonology acquired from Novell Corp last year (CI No 2,969). Caldera, headed by ex-Novell chief executive Ray Noorda, believes that OpenDOS will be of interest to OEM customers for use as an embedded technology for set-top boxes, entertainment devices such as games consoles, and hand-held products, including telephones, as well as Network Computers. OpenDOS offers multitasking capabilities to 80386, 80486 and Pentium-based machines. Caldera is still working on the details of its commercial strategy for the product, and expects to make announcements in the next few months. The kernel source code and application programmining interfaces for OpenDOS should be available on the company’s Web site next month. In a separate announcement, Caldera says it will implement Netscape Communications Corp’s Fastrack Server and Navigator Gold software for its OpenLinux operating system. The packages will be available as standalone products for Linux users to create Web content in HTML and run personal, workgroup or corporate Web sites, by April.
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