The first version of FreeDOS was released on September 16 of 1994, following Microsoft’s decision to cease development on MS-DOS in favor of Windows. This version 0.01 was still an Alpha release, with 0.1 from 1998 the first Beta and the first stable release (1.0, released on September 3 2006) still a while off. Even so, its main developer [Jim Hall] and the like-minded developers on the FreeDOS team managed to put together a very functional DOS using a shell, kernel and other elements which already partially existed before the FreeDOS (initially PD-DOS, for Public Domain DOS) idea was pitched by [Jim].
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://hackaday.com/2024/06/23/nearly-30-years-of-freedos-and-looking-ahead-to-the-future/