freedos still active (releasing updates),so i guess someone is still using it.. what the reason, i have no idea.
FreeDOS is quite commonly used on new desktop machines, this way the OEM can still sell a bootable machine without having to provide a full OS, The assumption is that most users will replace the FreeDOS installation with Linux, BSD or transfer an existing Windows license to the new machine, its also a superior OS to MSDOS or PCDOS for older machines while still being compatible with those.
It has also been used by for example ASUS to create bootable motherboard driver CDs that could be used to create SATA driver floppys for Windows 2000/XP installation. (Windows required SATA and SCSI drivers to be on a floppy in those days) and is used by some harddrive maintainance and recovery solutions and other bootable CDs (Intel has one that is used to update SSD firmwares for example).
FreeDOS has quite a few advantages over older DOS versions, primarily full support for FAT32, LBA and long filenames but also smaller things like scrollwheel support for the mouse driver, which makes it quite a bit better for creating small and fast bootable CDs for various purposes.
[size="1"]I don't suffer from insanity, I'm enjoying every minute of it.
The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!