DR-DOS

DR-DOS is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles, originally developed by Gary A. Kildall's Digital Research, Inc. and derived from Concurrent PC DOS 6.0, which was an advanced successor of CP/M-86. Upon its introduction in 1988, it was the first DOS that attempted to be compatible with IBM PC DOS and MS-DOS.

Its first release was version 3.31, named so that it would match MS-DOS's then-current version. DR DOS 5.0 was released in 1990 as the first to be sold in retail; it was critically acclaimed and led to DR DOS becoming the main rival to Microsoft's MS-DOS, who quickly responded with its own MS-DOS 5.0 but releasing over a year later. It introduced a graphical user interface layer called ViewMAX. DR DOS 6.0 was released in 1991; then with Novell's acquisition of Digital Research, the following version was named Novell DOS 7.0 in 1994. After another sale, to Caldera, updated versions were released partly open-source under the Caldera moniker, and briefly as OpenDOS. The last version for desktops, Caldera DR-DOS 7.03, was released in 1999, after which the software was sold to embedded systems by Caldera and then by DeviceLogics.