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<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-494.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/issues/1999/TidBITS#494_23-Aug-99.etx>



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...-Long Day's Journey into Night of the Living Dead Software

...>
  In both cases, "different" will probably mean "newer."

...>
  But sometimes there's no workaround.

...>
  I receive many messages from people who worry that their old
  software will die; after all, things in the real world do stop
  working, so people expect their software will too. My first advice
  is always to stop worrying. Has the software stopped working? No.
  Are you thinking of doing something to your computer that might
  make it stop working? No. So don't worry.

...>
  "The New Technologies Treadmill" in TidBITS-207_.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=02293>

...>
  Such situations have curious legal, moral, and practical
  ramifications. I detest software piracy, but if a company stops
  selling its software, then users are put in a very strange
  position. When I recommend IN Control, IN Control is no longer
  sold, and I've got a copy, it's natural for me to wonder who would
  be hurt (and who could legitimately stop me) if I just quietly
  permitted my copy to multiply.

...>
  Whatever the legalities, the practical reality is that software is
  a very special kind of entity. A photocopy clearly isn't the
  original book, and a tape clearly isn't the original vinyl LP;
  even a duplicated CD lacks certain physical marks of the original,
  and even if it didn't, it's a duplicate.

...>
  But software is made to be copied; that's how you get it
  onto your computer in the first place! The result is not a copy;
  it's the software! In this respect, software is more like a
  mathematical formula than a real-world entity.

...>
  Also, software is a means to an end; the documents it creates are
  the important thing.

...>
  At first blush, it seems crazy to keep that old Macintosh SE
  lying around merely to run a single piece of software. But at
  second blush, it seems like a great idea! The SE is worthless on
  the open market, and was probably just going to be recycled into
  pothole filler (no, really - see the page linked below!).

...>
  Still, this doesn't solve the problem of software ceasing to work;
  for that, we'd need the actual source code, plus a gang of
  volunteer experts willing to tinker with it. Nearly a year ago,
  Adam proposed the Electronic Phoenix Project to do just that. If
  dead or dying software troubles you, reread his piece. Although
  there was an initial flurry of interest and activity, the fact is
  that coordinating an open source effort is real work, which has
  yet to be done. Still, the Phoenix-Talk mailing list remains
  active on Adam's servers; if the recent releases of old binaries
  excite you enough to push for source code, the Electronic Phoenix
  Project can still fly.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05141>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05153>

...>
**Forward into the Past** -- With personal computers, it's easy to
  become fixated on the future, the coming thing, tomorrow's stock
  IPO.


________________________________________________________________
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