3 ms·

Operating systems change, and companies/developers come and go, but not all software really needs ongoing maintenance, and some of it really can work indefinite

Operating systems change, and companies/developers come and go, but not all software really needs ongoing maintenance, and some of it really can work indefinitely. I still have DOS games I legally purchased in the 1990s that run fine today. Why shouldn't that be true of mobile games? If the company stops updating the game, fine, but I should still be able to play it in 5 years if I bought it. Or at least, legally be able to; if it stops working for technical reasons, fair enough. I think the shift away from that is more to do with business models than technology— even book publishers have been trying to move from a sale to rental model.

slededit 10y ago
Funny you mention DOS games, which are one of my earliest examples of bit-rot. A lot of them stopped working with win95/98, and the rest are gone with 64-bit windows. DOS Box can help but there was a period of time when computers were too slow to emulate a DOS machine quickly enough.
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > Funny you mention DOS games, which are one of my earliest examples of bit-rot The other option is bit-rot and some form of DRM (the only way to enforce subscription) which would make playing the games an impossibility, even with emulators. It's clear to me the non-subscription/non-DRM option is the better one: even with subscriptions, no publisher will last forever.
- khedoros 10y ago
  Most of my DOS software ran fine on a Windows XP laptop in 2003 (sometimes with the addition of VDMSound to handle FM synthesis emulation). That same laptop will run most of the remainder quickly enough in Dosbox. I've also got a desktop with tech mostly circa 2000. It's got DOS and Windows 98 on it. Among my collection, I haven't found anything that I can't get to run. The hole that I see is during the time shortly after Dosbox's release when its compatibility with software would've been low and before they optimized for speed. It'd be closed up somewhat if we could send the current Dosbox source code back to 2002 ;-)
  - NEDM64 10y ago
    But there, you were lucky to have an open source and free project to help you out. Because without it, you could be 100% sure the developers won't be updating them. Now, lots of games from the late 90's, early 2000's don't work anymore on modern Windows versions. And DOSbox isn't powerful enough to run them. What you do now?
    - khedoros 10y ago
      > What you do now? Me, Personally? I have a Pentium 3 desktop running Windows 98, with a GeForce 4 video card. It's also got a Sound Blaster 16 video card. I consider it my machine to cover an era from the 80s to about 2002, when I can't run the software anywhere else. Actually, I mentioned that machine in my last post. An example piece of software: Rayman 2. I had trouble running it under Windows XP, 7, and Wine in Linux. It won't run in a VM because it requires (I think) DirectX 7 and hardware acceleration. It's a flawed example, though: it's had a few re-releases, including a compatibility fix by GOG for modern Windows versions. A more recent example: Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. It'll run on more recent versions of Windows, but has trouble with having over 2GB of RAM (or was it 4?) available. Some lovely group logged the system calls and developed a binary patch to allow it to run on modern systems. This illustrates another option: banding together as a community and doing what the publisher won't (or can't). A lot of the posts in this thread (including yours) seem to elevate convenience to the level of a technical requirement. At some high-90s percentage of coverage, that isn't a problem for old software. Every once in a while though, you have to do the inconvenient thing.
NEDM64 10y ago
Because resolutions change, for example. And it's the truth of most single player games. Apple is not forcing anyone to adopt this model, and most people won't be comfortable with a subscription based game anyway. However, for MMO's, subscriptions make sense.

slededit 10y ago

Funny you mention DOS games, which are one of my earliest examples of bit-rot. A lot of them stopped working with win95/98, and the rest are gone with 64-bit windows. DOS Box can help but there was a period of time when computers were too slow to emulate a DOS machine quickly enough.

sangnoir 10y ago
> Funny you mention DOS games, which are one of my earliest examples of bit-rot The other option is bit-rot and some form of DRM (the only way to enforce subscription) which would make playing the games an impossibility, even with emulators. It's clear to me the non-subscription/non-DRM option is the better one: even with subscriptions, no publisher will last forever.
khedoros 10y ago
Most of my DOS software ran fine on a Windows XP laptop in 2003 (sometimes with the addition of VDMSound to handle FM synthesis emulation). That same laptop will run most of the remainder quickly enough in Dosbox. I've also got a desktop with tech mostly circa 2000. It's got DOS and Windows 98 on it. Among my collection, I haven't found anything that I can't get to run. The hole that I see is during the time shortly after Dosbox's release when its compatibility with software would've been low and before they optimized for speed. It'd be closed up somewhat if we could send the current Dosbox source code back to 2002 ;-)
- NEDM64 10y ago
  But there, you were lucky to have an open source and free project to help you out. Because without it, you could be 100% sure the developers won't be updating them. Now, lots of games from the late 90's, early 2000's don't work anymore on modern Windows versions. And DOSbox isn't powerful enough to run them. What you do now?
  - khedoros 10y ago
    > What you do now? Me, Personally? I have a Pentium 3 desktop running Windows 98, with a GeForce 4 video card. It's also got a Sound Blaster 16 video card. I consider it my machine to cover an era from the 80s to about 2002, when I can't run the software anywhere else. Actually, I mentioned that machine in my last post. An example piece of software: Rayman 2. I had trouble running it under Windows XP, 7, and Wine in Linux. It won't run in a VM because it requires (I think) DirectX 7 and hardware acceleration. It's a flawed example, though: it's had a few re-releases, including a compatibility fix by GOG for modern Windows versions. A more recent example: Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. It'll run on more recent versions of Windows, but has trouble with having over 2GB of RAM (or was it 4?) available. Some lovely group logged the system calls and developed a binary patch to allow it to run on modern systems. This illustrates another option: banding together as a community and doing what the publisher won't (or can't). A lot of the posts in this thread (including yours) seem to elevate convenience to the level of a technical requirement. At some high-90s percentage of coverage, that isn't a problem for old software. Every once in a while though, you have to do the inconvenient thing.

NEDM64 10y ago

Because resolutions change, for example. And it's the truth of most single player games. Apple is not forcing anyone to adopt this model, and most people won't be comfortable with a subscription based game anyway. However, for MMO's, subscriptions make sense.