On 7/30/08 11:20 AM, "Christofer C. Bell" [email protected] wrote:
On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 12:35 AM, Leo Mauler [email protected] wrote:
--- On Sun, 7/27/08, Christofer C. Bell [email protected] wrote:
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.
Leo, I get what you're saying, but in the real world, no one is running Slackware 2.0 (what I started with in 1994). The software world, even the open source software world, does eventually move on. The point of open source licenses is to encourage a community effort to improve the state of the art. Maintaining extremely old software, even open source software, devolves into a futile individual effort. Everyone else moves on.
No one may be running Slackware 2.0, but I do know folks who still run RedHat 7.2 on their servers, or Debian Etch. While one can make arguments about the benefit of moving forward to a new version, the fact that you *can* continue to run RH 7.2, and maintain the software yourself if need be, is an advantage of the Free Software concept.
Matthew Copple