win95/98/ME and printers. An ethics issue comparable to DRM servers or not?
Leo Mauler
webgiant at yahoo.com
Wed Jul 30 00:35:06 CDT 2008
--- On Sun, 7/27/08, Christofer C. Bell <christofer.c.bell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Oren Beck
> <orenbeck at 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.
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