Freedows OS was an open source attempt at creating a Microsoft Windows clone for x86 platforms, intended to be released under the GNU General Public License, started in 1996 by Reece K. Sellin, an undergraduate Computing Science Major at the University College of the Cariboo in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. The name is a portmanteau of Free software and Windows and presumably also a play on Fritos.

It featured a number of interesting, novel concepts, including a modular architecture, derived from Stanford University s Cache Kernel, that used plug-in components to allow running software from different operating systems, including software from other hardware platforms.

Unfortunately, it seems to have been very ambitious. This, combined with sizable worldwide developer and alpha/beta-testing interest, resulted in difficulties in project organization and coordination. It made little progress with respect to code production, and faced nearly constant conceptual rehashing until a personal conflict split the project into two factions, Freedows (still controlled by Reece) and Alliance OS (where some of the other developers had gone), with both withering into relative obscurity.

Development of Freedows was indefinitely suspended in 2002, but the development of ReactOS, a separate project with similar goals, is still under way.

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