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> Software is not like a tv show or a stand up comedy set or an album. It is not a cultural artifact. It is machinery. You get two things wrong here imo, thoug

> Software is not like a tv show or a stand up comedy set or an album. It is not a cultural artifact. It is machinery. You get two things wrong here imo, though I'm not saying the article is great. 1. A lot of software is a cultural artifact. For instance, anything with a user interface we can become nostalgic for. See: pretty much all pop art like Warhol. Video games are another example. 2. It's the humans quitting, not the machinery. If a school bus driver gets tired of driving the bus, the bus has to stop until another driver is found. The same is true of a lot of software, especially open source.

smaudet 4y ago
> 2. It's the humans quitting, not the machinery. Is not as true as you think, the common reasons for software to "die": 1. The platform is not made anymore - we use different processors, hard-drives. A hard drive fails and a replacement can't be bought, or a PSU blows and the motherboard/processor are irrevocably damaged. 2. The software production infrastructure disappears - some core library updates, some set of dependent dependencies cannot be (easily) rebuilt. Software (MMOs in particular) can also die for social reasons, or manufactured ones (Windows discontinuing Pinball in newer OS versions). I would argue though, although some humans are doing some quitting (not supporting, trashing something early), for those downstream, it is as if the machinery had started quitting. Humans abandoning useful tools is fairly rare, evidenced even in recent memory with users of Adobe CS2/CS3 still running their (legally purchased) software even as Adobe sends out unlawful and libelous letters/emails...