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

[Luke -Jr]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008, Christofer C. Bell wrote:
> 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.

This isn't about maintaining software. This is about leaving the old software 
alone for people who might in fact still use it (in this case, I'm sure there 
are many, since 98 is still the best DOS-compatible Windows release). It 
requires absolutely no effort to permit copying and sharing of old drivers.

Furthermore, the argument made by Chris does not hold water simply because the 
commercial developers have been paid to provide something, and anything paid 
for should come with some kind of warranty, not to mention ownership (or an 
equivalent license) of what has actually be paid for. Freeware, on the other 
hand, logically comes with absolutely no warranty.