4 ms·

It's an apples to oranges comparison. Right back at you. On the one hand, you're saying that once MS stops actively developing a product, it's over. But on th

It's an apples to oranges comparison. Right back at you. On the one hand, you're saying that once MS stops actively developing a product, it's over. But on the other hand, you say that anybody can pick up any old open source software that they're interested in? Why isn't the same logic true for the MS platform? I mean, my copy of the .Net4 installer is just fine. Even if MS decided that the .Net would no longer be developed, what's stopping me from using what's already out there?

rbanffy 15y ago
> Why isn't the same logic true for the MS platform? Because they won't publish the source code of discontinued technologies so that others can continue their development. > my copy of the .Net4 installer is just fine. Even if MS decided that the .Net would no longer be developed, what's stopping me from using what's already out there? I see you confuse being available (as in "I kept a copy around") with being alive and actively developed. You can't continue to evolve Windows 95 by yourself. That's not true with each and every open-source product or project out there. BTW, try running your .NET 1.0 installer on an ARM-based Windows 8 machine and tell me if it works.
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  You can't continue to evolve Windows 95 by yourself. Nor can most organizations continue to evolve open source project X. try running your .NET 1.0 installer on an ARM-based Windows 8 machine and tell me if it works. Same is true for OpenOffice or whatever. The fact is that the vast majority of uses are not capable of contributing to open source code, let alone a complete, regression-tested port to another platform. For practical purposes, there is precious little difference between FOSS and proprietary software for most users: either what is currently available works for them, or it doesn't.
  - octopus 15y ago
    The difference is that you personally can't recompile .NET 1.0 to run on a Windows based ARM (only Microsoft can do this if they decide it is in their best interest). On the other hand you can, if you want or need, recompile OpenOffice (or any open source project) on ARM - see for example how Ubuntu was ported to ARM!
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    > Nor can most organizations continue to evolve open source project X. Can you name any project X you feel fits your hypothesis? > The fact is that the vast majority of uses are not capable of contributing to open source code At least they can pay someone capable to do it. Can you find someone capable of evolving Windows 95? No, you can't. Source-code availability is critical for this. If your company, for instance, depends on PHP3 (or Perl 3, or Python 1 or something similar) you'll find readily available talent that can either port your application to a modern version of whatever it needs, or add whatever functionality you require to the ancient product you depend on.
    - CWuestefeld 15y ago
      > > Nor can most organizations continue to evolve open source project X. > Can you name any project X you feel fits your hypothesis? That seems an odd question to me. Pick a random organization that is using some FOSS package. I bet you that this organization is not going to be prepared to evolve that system, either due to skills or to other resource issues. How many companies out there are going to be able to port Python or LibreOffice or what-have-you to a new platform? Most don't have the skillset. But even if they did, they won't have the resources to keep the developer working on that rather than the internal projects. Sure, there are exceptions (and I'm glad there are), but those are just that: exceptions. Even if the theoretical possibility is there, practical considerations don't allow it. Most companies do not have the resources to contribute to FOSS, and even fewer companies actually do it.
      - rbanffy 15y ago
        I find it extremely unlikely we would have to port something the size of LibreOffice or Python to a completely different platform. What we would probably be able to do would be to fix bugs that affect us, port it to newer releases of the dependencies it was originally designed for (or, if not possible, adopt the dependencies) and make small improvements if the need arises. What we could also do is to find other groups with similar needs and pool our resources. No closed-source system allows that.
- crenshaw 15y ago
  I see you confuse being available (as in "I kept a copy around") with being alive and actively developed. I see you confuse source being available with being alive and actively developed. Sure, in theory, with source available its possible that someone pick it up and keep it alive. But often you either need a critical mass for that. MySQL may go on forever, but I can walk through the GitHub or SourceForge cemetery to find many dead bodies that will likely never be resurrected. BTW, for many companies, you can often get the code in escrow. So if they discontinue or stop supporting the product, you get the source code.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    > I can walk through the GitHub or SourceForge cemetery to find many dead bodies that will likely never be resurrected. That's not the point - they won't be resurrected because nobody uses them anymore. > BTW, for many companies, you can often get the code in escrow. On one side you have a mechanism (open-source) that allows anyone interested to pool resources to maintain software after its previous maintainers abandon it. On the other, you see a mechanism under which you can, sometimes, get code that may or may not have been carefully maintained and may or may not have horrendous bugs you'll only become aware when you actually execute the contractual clause that allows you to get the source. So, can we get the source for Windows 95? It's discontinued, right?
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  "You can't continue to evolve Windows 95 by yourself. That's not true with each and every open-source product or project out there." This benefit is a lot more hypothetical than real. Practically speaking you can't continue to evolve Linux 1.2.0 (the version in the Win95 timeframe) yourself either. That's the fulltime job of hundreds of people. In both situations you're relying on those behind the project to evolve them if you want to use them as a foundation of other software. And as the parent poster mentioned, in the real world you're far less likely to have had to evolve your own software to deal with changes in the underlying OS if you developed for Windows. Win32 apps that use the APIs correctly still work 16 years later. Good luck getting your coff/old-glibc/old-UI-lib Linux app from '95 running on modern Linux...
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    In the real world, you are far less likely to have to evolve something the size of the Linux kernel (1.2 was, IIRC, orders of magnitude smaller than Win95), but it's really easy to continue maintaining smaller codebases (I pointed out Zope version 2 as an example of software that was obsoleted by their original authors but that has been evolving in the hands of a community that felt it would be too much work to port their software to Zope v3). It also helps that so much of the mission-critical software you run on Linux is also open-source and can be easily recompiled. And you only need to recompile when the software can't run directly: I have Python code running in production that was written originally for Python 1.5.2. Oddly enough, lots of mission-critical applications are written in Python, Perl, PHP and various flavors of shell that run directly on more or less any *nix machine. The fact is that dead ends in free software are so rare and so easy to get out of, this situation only rarely arises. When it does, you can always weight your options and, sometimes, opt to go with a fork. Like I said, it has happened in the past.
    - CWuestefeld 15y ago
      And you only need to recompile when the software can't run directly You've come around to actually making my argument! :) As I said, as long as I have my installer for .Net, the software I write for that platform will still work.
rjbond3rd 15y ago
You can use it for a while, maybe a long while, without the source code. But if you have the source, you can keep it going forever, rebuild a community of committers, add bug fixes, security fixes, new features. Move to new architectures, add new abstractions, build your business on it without worrying that someone will arbitrarily try to kill it off...
Pewpewarrows 15y ago
And what happens when .Net4 needs changes in order to evolve with the current ecosystem of products and platforms? Or just to run at all? That's right, you're shit out of luck. You go and learn a new tool and hope it doesn't happen again. With Open Source you can always modify it to fit your needs, long after the original creators stop maintaining it. I suggest you actually learn the difference between proprietary and open source projects before attempting to continue in this discussion.

rbanffy 15y ago

> Why isn't the same logic true for the MS platform? Because they won't publish the source code of discontinued technologies so that others can continue their development. > my copy of the .Net4 installer is just fine. Even if MS decided that the .Net would no longer be developed, what's stopping me from using what's already out there? I see you confuse being available (as in "I kept a copy around") with being alive and actively developed. You can't continue to evolve Windows 95 by yourself. That's not true with each and every open-source product or project out there. BTW, try running your .NET 1.0 installer on an ARM-based Windows 8 machine and tell me if it works.

CWuestefeld 15y ago
You can't continue to evolve Windows 95 by yourself. Nor can most organizations continue to evolve open source project X. try running your .NET 1.0 installer on an ARM-based Windows 8 machine and tell me if it works. Same is true for OpenOffice or whatever. The fact is that the vast majority of uses are not capable of contributing to open source code, let alone a complete, regression-tested port to another platform. For practical purposes, there is precious little difference between FOSS and proprietary software for most users: either what is currently available works for them, or it doesn't.
- octopus 15y ago
  The difference is that you personally can't recompile .NET 1.0 to run on a Windows based ARM (only Microsoft can do this if they decide it is in their best interest). On the other hand you can, if you want or need, recompile OpenOffice (or any open source project) on ARM - see for example how Ubuntu was ported to ARM!
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > Nor can most organizations continue to evolve open source project X. Can you name any project X you feel fits your hypothesis? > The fact is that the vast majority of uses are not capable of contributing to open source code At least they can pay someone capable to do it. Can you find someone capable of evolving Windows 95? No, you can't. Source-code availability is critical for this. If your company, for instance, depends on PHP3 (or Perl 3, or Python 1 or something similar) you'll find readily available talent that can either port your application to a modern version of whatever it needs, or add whatever functionality you require to the ancient product you depend on.
  - CWuestefeld 15y ago
    > > Nor can most organizations continue to evolve open source project X. > Can you name any project X you feel fits your hypothesis? That seems an odd question to me. Pick a random organization that is using some FOSS package. I bet you that this organization is not going to be prepared to evolve that system, either due to skills or to other resource issues. How many companies out there are going to be able to port Python or LibreOffice or what-have-you to a new platform? Most don't have the skillset. But even if they did, they won't have the resources to keep the developer working on that rather than the internal projects. Sure, there are exceptions (and I'm glad there are), but those are just that: exceptions. Even if the theoretical possibility is there, practical considerations don't allow it. Most companies do not have the resources to contribute to FOSS, and even fewer companies actually do it.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      I find it extremely unlikely we would have to port something the size of LibreOffice or Python to a completely different platform. What we would probably be able to do would be to fix bugs that affect us, port it to newer releases of the dependencies it was originally designed for (or, if not possible, adopt the dependencies) and make small improvements if the need arises. What we could also do is to find other groups with similar needs and pool our resources. No closed-source system allows that.
crenshaw 15y ago
I see you confuse being available (as in "I kept a copy around") with being alive and actively developed. I see you confuse source being available with being alive and actively developed. Sure, in theory, with source available its possible that someone pick it up and keep it alive. But often you either need a critical mass for that. MySQL may go on forever, but I can walk through the GitHub or SourceForge cemetery to find many dead bodies that will likely never be resurrected. BTW, for many companies, you can often get the code in escrow. So if they discontinue or stop supporting the product, you get the source code.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > I can walk through the GitHub or SourceForge cemetery to find many dead bodies that will likely never be resurrected. That's not the point - they won't be resurrected because nobody uses them anymore. > BTW, for many companies, you can often get the code in escrow. On one side you have a mechanism (open-source) that allows anyone interested to pool resources to maintain software after its previous maintainers abandon it. On the other, you see a mechanism under which you can, sometimes, get code that may or may not have been carefully maintained and may or may not have horrendous bugs you'll only become aware when you actually execute the contractual clause that allows you to get the source. So, can we get the source for Windows 95? It's discontinued, right?
georgemcbay 15y ago
"You can't continue to evolve Windows 95 by yourself. That's not true with each and every open-source product or project out there." This benefit is a lot more hypothetical than real. Practically speaking you can't continue to evolve Linux 1.2.0 (the version in the Win95 timeframe) yourself either. That's the fulltime job of hundreds of people. In both situations you're relying on those behind the project to evolve them if you want to use them as a foundation of other software. And as the parent poster mentioned, in the real world you're far less likely to have had to evolve your own software to deal with changes in the underlying OS if you developed for Windows. Win32 apps that use the APIs correctly still work 16 years later. Good luck getting your coff/old-glibc/old-UI-lib Linux app from '95 running on modern Linux...
- rbanffy 15y ago
  In the real world, you are far less likely to have to evolve something the size of the Linux kernel (1.2 was, IIRC, orders of magnitude smaller than Win95), but it's really easy to continue maintaining smaller codebases (I pointed out Zope version 2 as an example of software that was obsoleted by their original authors but that has been evolving in the hands of a community that felt it would be too much work to port their software to Zope v3). It also helps that so much of the mission-critical software you run on Linux is also open-source and can be easily recompiled. And you only need to recompile when the software can't run directly: I have Python code running in production that was written originally for Python 1.5.2. Oddly enough, lots of mission-critical applications are written in Python, Perl, PHP and various flavors of shell that run directly on more or less any *nix machine. The fact is that dead ends in free software are so rare and so easy to get out of, this situation only rarely arises. When it does, you can always weight your options and, sometimes, opt to go with a fork. Like I said, it has happened in the past.
  - CWuestefeld 15y ago
    And you only need to recompile when the software can't run directly You've come around to actually making my argument! :) As I said, as long as I have my installer for .Net, the software I write for that platform will still work.

rjbond3rd 15y ago

You can use it for a while, maybe a long while, without the source code. But if you have the source, you can keep it going forever, rebuild a community of committers, add bug fixes, security fixes, new features. Move to new architectures, add new abstractions, build your business on it without worrying that someone will arbitrarily try to kill it off...

Pewpewarrows 15y ago

And what happens when .Net4 needs changes in order to evolve with the current ecosystem of products and platforms? Or just to run at all? That's right, you're shit out of luck. You go and learn a new tool and hope it doesn't happen again. With Open Source you can always modify it to fit your needs, long after the original creators stop maintaining it. I suggest you actually learn the difference between proprietary and open source projects before attempting to continue in this discussion.