[PLUG] Abandonware problem and ScummVM...

[Michael Robinson]

A bit of an aside, when I bought a usb sound card from usbgear.com
it was advertised as being Windows 98SE compatible.  It wasn't.  I 
was told tough when I brought this up and it was suggested that I 
should complain to Microsoft.  If Windows 98SE were open source, 
there'd probably be an open source driver for it.

Microsoft has abandoned the dos/Windows 3.x combo, Windows 95 all
versions, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows NT all versions, 
Windows 2000, and Windows Millenium.  Sadly, none of these old 
versions of Windows are open source or even freely 
redistributable, although there are web sites that redistribute 
them illegally.

Noone can support Windows 9x except Microsoft and Microsoft doesn't.
This is one of the major problems with proprietary operating systems,
yet it is more common and seemingly more popular to write software
for proprietary systems than it is to write software for open systems.

There is a strong push to support proprietary software on Linux.
ScummVM is part of that push, dosbox another part, virtualbox and
other emulators play a part as well.  Trouble is, will only old
commercial software get support and if that's the case, will it
be legally available?  Changing copyright law to put a limitation
of 10 years on proprietary software makes sense.  The copyright
shouldn't be for the lifetime of the author or company that owns
it.  The government could step in and pass retroactive copyright
reform.  If you are profiting from a software program after 10
years and want to keep it proprietary, you should be able to
pay a nominal yearly fee to keep it that way.

There should be an exception for copyleft software.  Stuff under
the GPL should never come up for renewal.