Editing Jim Hall (computer programmer) (section)

{{BLP primary sources|date=July 2012}}
{{short description|American programmer and FreeDOS founder}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2019|cs1-dates=y}}
{{Use list-defined references|date=December 2021}}
{{Infobox person
| name            = Jim Hall
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| alma_mater      = [[University of Wisconsin-River Falls]]
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| website         = {{URL|www.freedos.org/jhall/}}
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'''Jim Hall''' ('''James F. Hall''') is a [[computer programmer]] and advocate of [[free software]], best known for his work on [[FreeDOS]]. Hall began writing the free replacement for the [[MS-DOS]] [[operating system]] in 1994 when he was still a [[physics]] student<ref name="FLOSS"/> at the [[University of Wisconsin-River Falls]].<ref name="Past"/> He remains active with FreeDOS, and is currently the coordinator for the project.<ref name="History"/>

Hall has said he created FreeDOS in response to [[Microsoft]] announcing end of support for MS-DOS in 1994,<ref name="FLOSS"/> a year before [[Windows 95]] was released. As a user and fan of MS-DOS, Hall did not want the functionality of [[DOS]] to go away. Prompted by a March 31, 1994 post on comp.os.msdos.misc asking if "anyone, for example [[GNU]] et al. ever considered writing a [[Public Domain]] DOS",<ref name="Valente_1994"/> Hall decided to garner support for a free version of DOS, written under a free or public domain model.<ref name="Past"/><ref name="History"/> In a June 29, 1994 post, Hall announced an effort to create a free DOS, called PD-DOS, writing:<ref name="Hall_1994_Announcement"/>

{{quote|A few months ago, I posted articles relating to starting a public domain version of DOS.  The general support for this at the time was ong, and many people agreed with the statement, "start writing!" So, I have …

Announcing the first effort to produce a PD-DOS. I have written up a "manifest" describing the goals of such a project and an outline of the work, as well as a "task list" that shows exactly what needs to be written. I'll post those here, and let discussion follow.

If you are thinking about developing, or have ideas or suggestions for PD-DOS, I would appreciate direct email to me. If you just want to discuss the merits or morals of writing a PD-DOS, I'll leave that to the net. I'll check in from time to time to see how the discussion is going, and maybe contribute a little to what promises to be a very polarized debate! :->

I am excited about PD-DOS, and I am hoping I can get a group started!}}

Within a few weeks, other programmers including [[Pat Villani]] and Tim Norman joined the project. A [[kernel (operating system)|kernel]], the [[COMMAND.COM]] command line interpreter (shell) and core utilities were created by pooling code they had written or found available.<ref name="Past"/><ref name="History"/> Hall wrote over a dozen of the first DOS utilities for the project, mostly file and [[Batch file|batch]] utilities. In a July 26, 1994 post, Hall announced the PD-DOS project had been renamed to "Free-DOS", having updated the project's goals to intend to distribute source code under the [[GNU General Public License]].<ref name="Hall_1994_Project"/> The project would later be renamed "FreeDOS", without the hyphen, after the publication of ''FreeDOS Kernel'', by Pat Villani.<ref name="Villani_1996_Kernel"/><ref name="History"/> Hall was the project's release coordinator from Beta1 until about Beta7, and also released the first alpha [[Software distribution|distribution]] of Free-DOS, as announced in a post on comp.os.msdos.misc.<ref name="Hall_1994_Alpha"/> He is again the project coordinator since April 2011 after Pat Villani's departure, and subsequent death in August of the same year.

Hall is also the original developer of [[GNU Robots]], but he is no longer active on this project and has since handed maintainership over to [[Tim Northover]]. It is now being developed by Bradley Smith.