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From: timlee@bnrmtv.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.apple
Subject: Re: Including DOS in marketable products
Message-ID: <480@bnrmtv.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Jul-86 16:23:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: bnrmtv.480
Posted: Thu Jul 17 16:23:48 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Jul-86 02:54:28 EDT
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Organization: Bell Northern Research, Mtn. View, CA
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> Does anyone have any experience in including DOS in a product?  I have
> seen stand-alone disks that boot the Apple, load themselves, and go.
> I assume they have a copy of DOS on the disk to load the program and
> to do any kind of disk read/write the program might need.  Is this
> licensed through Apple?  How much does it cost?  I have a program
> that runs under DOS 3.3 right now, but I may move it to ProDos later.
> Currently, the user has to boot up (the correct version of) DOS, then
> BRUN the program.  Since I will have two separate programs on the disk
> I can't get around the BRUN, but I would at least like to guarantee that
> the user has the right version of DOS.

Many "load-and-go" programs are copy protected; some of these use a 
completely alien DOS which has no relation to Apple's DOS.  Others use
a modified version of Apple's DOS.  I don't know what licensing, if any,
that Apple requires in distributing DOS with a program either as is or
modified.  Apple itself would be your best source of this info.

DOS 3.3/ProDOS question:  If it's ok with Apple to distribute its DOS,
just provide a DOS and a ProDOS version on opposite sides of the disk.
If it isn't ok, then do the same but delete the DOS from both sides.
Be sure to mark which side is DOS and which is ProDOS.  Then the user
can boot whatever s/he has, insert the correct side, and BRUN the program.

Note:  few programs for the Apple are distributed without any DOS on it.
The only exceptions I know of are disks of public domain software in which
people try to stuff as much as possible onto a disk.  I suspect that
consumers may frown on a non-bootable program disk.  Call Apple and find
out what they think about distributing DOS.  They probably aren't that
restrictive or expensive, since their DOS is found on every non-protected
disk sold with software.