--- On Sun, 7/27/08, Christofer C. Bell christofer.c.bell@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Oren Beck orenbeck@gmail.com wrote:
There seems to me an ethics issue developing . One possibly directed at establishing the "pattern of crime" RE:EOL software/hardware support.
While I'm not sure what you're saying from your post (which doesn't make much sense to me), you seem to be speculating that dropping support for EOL software is equivalent to locking up digital media in DRM.
These are apples over here, and those are oranges over there. ;-)
I'm more inclined to think that there are Red Delicious over here, and Granny Smith over there. If DRM locks you into using a particular device to use your purchased media, then there's not a whole lot of difference between that and closed-source software, since lack of access to the source code is remarkably similar to "lack of access to the decoding algorithm".
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.