win95/98/ME and printers. An ethics issue comparable to DRM servers or not?

[Christofer C. Bell]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 12:35 AM, Leo Mauler <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- On Sun, 7/27/08, Christofer C. Bell <christofer.c.bell at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Is it your contention that vendors should support
> > a given software release forever?  If so, what is
> > your plan to ensure that free software developers
> > start supporting every past release of their
> > software?  If you're not holding OSS developers
> > to that standard, why are you holding commercial
> > developers to it?
>
> Over here we have the real apples and oranges, sadly you're the one making
> that particular kind of comparison.  OSS means support is *nice* but not
> necessary, because anyone can step in and support the software, or maintain
> and improve it themselves.  Closed-source means support is *necessary* or
> the software eventually becomes little more than garbage bits on a hard
> drive.


Leo, I get what you're saying, but in the real world, no one is running
Slackware 2.0 (what I started with in 1994).  The software world, even the
open source software world, does eventually move on. The point of open
source licenses is to encourage a community effort to improve the state of
the art.  Maintaining extremely old software, even open source software,
devolves into a futile individual effort.  Everyone else moves on.

-- 
Chris
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