3 ms·

backwards compatibility is the cause for all of this, and it's a bitch to deal with in an ideal world every time you need to break compatibility you would prov

backwards compatibility is the cause for all of this, and it's a bitch to deal with in an ideal world every time you need to break compatibility you would provide extensive documentation and make migration as painless as possible. this might work if it wasn't for the tiny little problem of abandonware. the amount of critical tasks for which a piece of software that nobody knows how it works anymore is required is astounding. should it be illegal for businesses and public-adjacent entities to operate proprietary software that is not actively maintained by anyone and has zero support contracts attached?

o1y32 3y ago
...good luck asking companies that are no longer in business to maintain their software
- CrampusDestrus 3y ago
  If we fined businesses that use unsupported proprietary software they would either have to move to something proprietary and actively maintained or collectively crowdfund an open source alternative.
  - throw47474777j 3y ago
    That would make it infeasible to buy software from any company except the most stable mega-corporations and immediately destroy all independent software businesses.
  - Mountain_Skies 3y ago
    Too much of the FOSS community has gone ideological looney toons lately to assume that software from that environment is inherently stable. We've already seen maintainers try to pull code or insert license terms that demand conformity to certain ideological beliefs in order to continue using their code.
mcpackieh 3y ago
We shouldn't need backwards compatibility built into the OS when we have perfectly functional compatibility shims that can be isolated from the rest of the system or run with reduced/user privileges. VMs, DOSBox, Wine, etc.
- jollyllama 3y ago
  They're not perfectly functional. There are plenty of USB issues when using VMware and other similar pieces of software.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    Okay, fair. Instead of perfectly, call it good enough most of the time. People with some specific legacy need can run an old OS on a computer isolated from the rest of the network, but there's no reason to have such security-compromising backwards comparability built into every OS install by default.
    - halkony 3y ago
      Also worth considering that the big companies with mission critical systems on abandonware would certainly "lobby" to orgs like Microsoft to keep them from having to dust the cobwebs (whatever that looks like).
  - fsflover 3y ago
    I have no problems with USB on Qubes OS when I connect the USB controller to a VM.
jeroenhd 3y ago
All of these technologies are pretty great, actually. MHTML solves real problems. VBScript is just bash but with different wording. OLE embeds are an awesome idea that has sadly fallen in disuse (embedding a spreadsheet inside a text document without resorting to weird table hacks? that's just a good idea!). VBA macros power more businesses than any startup ever will. CHM help files were absolutely wonderful and I'm sad to see them replaced with terrible websites that rely on Google for anyone to actually find anything. Being able to not only save your complex search result, but also share it is a great idea that didn't get advertised long enough. Sending someone a file so other people can also find "photos taken by my camera between last August and last September" without having send some kind of proprietary photo album is a great idea. Say what you want about their proprietary lock ins and abhorrent business practises, but they have had some great ideas that took competing operating system years or even decades to copy. You still can't embed documents as easily and effective the way you can in Microsoft Office in most competing products. These features aren't abandoned, they're used by millions across the globe. Microsoft does need to configure its tooling better to detect executable code. The VBScript at the end of the chain shouldn't have been executed. I'd be sad to see most of the other "legacy" tools disappear because of their malware capabilities.
- CrampusDestrus 3y ago
  >These features aren't abandoned, they're used by millions across the globe. abandonment refers to the lack of support, not lack of usage
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
Many, if not most, large companies are filled up with tons of old software that no one remembers even exists, silently running processes in the background that are like gravity in that you assume it is always there due to be ubiquitous in our daily lives. About a decade ago I discovered a critical process running on machines in every Home Depot store relied on a program called Batchman, which was a type-in utility from a 1989 issue of PC Magazine. Breaking compatibility would require someone to go in and recreate the process that's been silently running for decades. No one I talked to on the HD team I was working with had ever seen that code before and had no idea what Batchman was or what it was doing.

o1y32 3y ago

...good luck asking companies that are no longer in business to maintain their software

CrampusDestrus 3y ago
If we fined businesses that use unsupported proprietary software they would either have to move to something proprietary and actively maintained or collectively crowdfund an open source alternative.
- throw47474777j 3y ago
  That would make it infeasible to buy software from any company except the most stable mega-corporations and immediately destroy all independent software businesses.
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  Too much of the FOSS community has gone ideological looney toons lately to assume that software from that environment is inherently stable. We've already seen maintainers try to pull code or insert license terms that demand conformity to certain ideological beliefs in order to continue using their code.

mcpackieh 3y ago

We shouldn't need backwards compatibility built into the OS when we have perfectly functional compatibility shims that can be isolated from the rest of the system or run with reduced/user privileges. VMs, DOSBox, Wine, etc.

jollyllama 3y ago
They're not perfectly functional. There are plenty of USB issues when using VMware and other similar pieces of software.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Okay, fair. Instead of perfectly, call it good enough most of the time. People with some specific legacy need can run an old OS on a computer isolated from the rest of the network, but there's no reason to have such security-compromising backwards comparability built into every OS install by default.
  - halkony 3y ago
    Also worth considering that the big companies with mission critical systems on abandonware would certainly "lobby" to orgs like Microsoft to keep them from having to dust the cobwebs (whatever that looks like).
- fsflover 3y ago
  I have no problems with USB on Qubes OS when I connect the USB controller to a VM.

jeroenhd 3y ago

All of these technologies are pretty great, actually. MHTML solves real problems. VBScript is just bash but with different wording. OLE embeds are an awesome idea that has sadly fallen in disuse (embedding a spreadsheet inside a text document without resorting to weird table hacks? that's just a good idea!). VBA macros power more businesses than any startup ever will. CHM help files were absolutely wonderful and I'm sad to see them replaced with terrible websites that rely on Google for anyone to actually find anything. Being able to not only save your complex search result, but also share it is a great idea that didn't get advertised long enough. Sending someone a file so other people can also find "photos taken by my camera between last August and last September" without having send some kind of proprietary photo album is a great idea. Say what you want about their proprietary lock ins and abhorrent business practises, but they have had some great ideas that took competing operating system years or even decades to copy. You still can't embed documents as easily and effective the way you can in Microsoft Office in most competing products. These features aren't abandoned, they're used by millions across the globe. Microsoft does need to configure its tooling better to detect executable code. The VBScript at the end of the chain shouldn't have been executed. I'd be sad to see most of the other "legacy" tools disappear because of their malware capabilities.

CrampusDestrus 3y ago
>These features aren't abandoned, they're used by millions across the globe. abandonment refers to the lack of support, not lack of usage

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Mountain_Skies 3y ago

Many, if not most, large companies are filled up with tons of old software that no one remembers even exists, silently running processes in the background that are like gravity in that you assume it is always there due to be ubiquitous in our daily lives. About a decade ago I discovered a critical process running on machines in every Home Depot store relied on a program called Batchman, which was a type-in utility from a 1989 issue of PC Magazine. Breaking compatibility would require someone to go in and recreate the process that's been silently running for decades. No one I talked to on the HD team I was working with had ever seen that code before and had no idea what Batchman was or what it was doing.