The FreeDOS Alpha 3 distribution was released January 1995.
History
We don't have a complete history of the early FreeDOS releases. The MARC.info page says Alpha 3 was released 1/95.
An archived announcement dated May 20 1995 says the current version is Alpha 3.
Announcement
The Free-DOS Project The goal of the Free-DOS project is to produce a free MS-DOS compatible operating system, suitable for any DOS capable platform. Free-DOS is distributed under the terms of the GNU general public license. I am pleased to announce that an updated version of the Free-DOS FAQ and Status Report is available via the Free-DOS project home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/freedos.html It has been some time since I have made any announcements regarding the Free-DOS project, but I can say that there have been several new developments, including: Version 0.90 of the DOS-C kernel by Pat Villani Several new programs, and the upcoming ALPHA 4 RELEASE PROGRAMMERS are wanted for C and ASM projects, or to donate source code. If you have written, or are willing to write, an FDISK, CHKDSK, UNDELETE, XCOPY, EMS driver, etc. as detailed in the status report, please contact me, we could certainly use your help! Your assistance in helping to provide some of these few remaining critical programs will be invaluable to the success of the Free-DOS project. The current release of Free-DOS is the ALPHA 3 RELEASE: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/freedos3.zip Please note that the alpha 3 release does NOT contain a substantial number of new programs and code. Check the /incoming directory of the FTP site for new items. A new release is due Real Soon Now. To reiterate, more complete information is available on the Free-DOS WWW page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/freedos.html M. "Hannibal" Toal Free-DOS project coordinator