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

[Matthew Copple]

On 7/30/08 11:20 AM, "Christofer C. Bell" <christofer.c.bell at gmail.com>
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.

No one may be running Slackware 2.0, but I do know folks who still run
RedHat 7.2 on their servers, or Debian Etch. While one can make arguments
about the benefit of moving forward to a new version, the fact that you
*can* continue to run RH 7.2, and maintain the software yourself if need be,
is an advantage of the Free Software concept.

Matthew Copple