Regarding the old official distributions of FreeDOS:

I keep getting the occasional user who has downloaded a really old
version of the FreeDOS distribution (usually Beta5) and even though
they ftp'd it from 'official.old' on the ibiblio archive, these users
still ask me why things are out of date or do not work correctly. I
keep pointing them to the 1.0 distribution, and that seems to work
fine for them. So to remove any confusion, I have removed the old
FreeDOS distributions from ibiblio.

These distributions will reappear soon in another "old archive"
location on ibiblio, but cannot do so until late November 2007.

Under section 3 of the GNU GPL (v2), redistribution has these
requirements:

>>>>>>>>
 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

   a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
   source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
   1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software
   interchange; or,

   b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
   years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
   cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
   machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
   distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
   customarily used for software interchange; or,

   c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
   to distribute corresponding source code.  (This alternative is
   allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
   received the program in object code or executable form with such
   an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
<<<<<<<<

To meet 3b, until the FreeDOS old archives reappear on ibiblio, if you
have downloaded a version of the old FreeDOS distribution and did not
download the source code CDROM, please contact jhall@freedos.org to
request a copy.

The following were removed:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/official.old/ 
0.05.ALPHA/ (12 Jan 1998) 
0.1.BETA/ ("Orlando", 25 Mar 1998) 
0.2.BETA/ ("Marvin", 29 Oct 1998?) 
0.3.BETA/ (21 Apr 1999?) 
0.4.BETA/ ("Lemur", 9 Apr 2000?) 
0.5.BETA/ ("Lara", 10 Aug 2000) 
0.6.BETA/ ("Midnite", 18 Mar 2001) 
0.7.BETA/ ("Spears", 7 Sep 2001) 
0.8.BETA/ ("Nikita", 7 Apr 2002) 
0.9rc1.BETA/ ("Methusalem", Jul 2003?) 
0.9rc2.BETA/ (23 Aug 2003) 
0.9rc3.BETA/ (27 Sep 2003) 
0.9rc4.BETA/ (5 Feb 2004) 
0.9rc5.BETA/ (20 Mar 2004) 
0.9.BETA/ (28 Sep 2004) 
0.9sr1.BETA/ (30 Nov 2004) 
0.9sr2.BETA/ (30 Nov 2005) 
ripcord/ (2001-2003)

3 years since release date means 30 Nov 2007 and 30 Nov 2008 for the
most recent FreeDOS Beta9 distributions. FreeDOS Beta9 (vanilla) was
released for distribution 28 Sep 2004, and is no longer required to
provide source code after 28 Sep 2007. However, this old version can
be provided if requested.

-jh