I made DOSBox Pure to work as good as possible with DOS games no matter the source, be it some collection, some shady abandonware site, GOG or someones own floppy disks they have in their garage. When I started half a year ago, I looked around what people use to store DOS games, and it seems ZIP was very common. I found out about the archiving that was done by the Total DOS Collection which also uses ZIP so it seemed to make sense. Everyone knows ZIP, everyone can make and modify ZIP. It's a free and simple format for development purposes as well. For me it is clearly the best choice to make something that works in 2020 to use ZIP.
Exodos? I haven't even heard about until after I made the announcement of my project. For me it was just another archival project that luckily also uses ZIP. Ok, nice, I thought. Later someone on the libretro Discord convinced me to look at incorporating the keyb2joy.pad project which lead me to join it's Discord instance to ask if that's ok and chat about the possibilities. The people behind the keyb2joy.pad project were enthusiastic about the idea and remained positive about the whole thing. There's a public comment by one of the authors on my YouTube video "DOSBox Pure - Automatic Game Pad Control Mappings".
It happened that the keyb2joy.pad project shared the discord with the exodos project. And somehow there me and my project was already a target for mockery by the people behind exodos. I truly have no idea what brought the anger upon me. Now I can only guess it is because people I don't know at all are asking the exodos people to use/support/do something with their project and DOSBox Pure?? I don't even know why that would be asked. It's another DOSBox fork among many, sharing the same core, quirks, problems and greatness.
That means it's not meant to be 100% perfect DOS emulation. It means feasibility, the balance of compatibility and performance. DOS doesn't yet have someone like Byuu that has the technical skills and motivation to truly care about preservation on the emulation level. I'm a big supporter of game preservation, it's the art form I certainly care the most about. For DOS I think at this point that means making sure files are not getting lost. As long as we have the files, the technicalities can be solved by someone talented some day in the future.
Just like regular DOSBox, DOSBox Pure is a best effort thing. I never touted anything about this being about game preservation. I wanted an easier way to play DOS games on my Raspberry Pi, I made DOSBox Pure, it's really that simple.
So @eXo, I don't know why you seem angry at my project. I can't apologize for people I don't know if you feel bothered by them suggesting you to do something with my project. I certainly am not suggesting anything. But please don't tout shit like I stole the keyb2joy.pad project when I went and clearly got permission. Don't tout shit like "It's not open source" because I think you know what the GPL entails (source is on GitHub). Don't go around rabble-rousing your goons so they come and call me a thief or worse, OK? If you have beef to settle or have ideas how to better approach preservation from a technical standpoint with a new DOSBox fork, you have my discord number thingy. And if you truly don't give a shit, then act like you don't. Maybe just ignore the requests?
