It is based on a cut-down runtime version of Digital Research's GEM/3 graphical user interface modified to run only a single statically built application, the ViewMAX desktop.

[2][3][4] Also, Digital Research's SID86, the symbolic instruction debugger that shipped with DR DOS 3.xx and provided dedicated functions to debug GEM applications (see ?Y GEM-specific help under SID86 or GEMSID), could be used for ViewMAX as well.

[22] If the underlying DR-DOS had the optional multi-user security module loaded, ViewMAX would also provide support for the extended world/group/owner access permission system.

Although ViewMAX 3 was part of the DR DOS "Panther" Beta 1 distribution in October 1992,[11] it was never completed and apparently abandoned in favour to Apple's and Novell's "Star Trek" team project in 1992/1993, which remained unreleased as well.

After closing the DR-DOS development center Caldera UK in early 1999, the remaining source code of the ViewMAX 3 beta version was published in April 1999 by the US parent company Caldera Thin Clients under the GPL[25] following continued community request to release the sources, shortly before the company changed its name to Lineo and switched to Linux-based technologies three months later.