[PLUG] Abandonware problem and ScummVM...

[Larry Brigman]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:32 PM, Michael Robinson
<plug_1 at robinson-west.com> wrote:
> 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.
>

There are companies out there that have fairly liberal licensing.
One product I use allows me when I upgrade to give away my old
CD's for the program to anyone.  They can register it at no charge.

The reason that there are more companies writing software for the the
proprietary
OS's is that is where the money is.  Also where most of the Eyes are looking
for software (Except in the IT server rooms and that is even moving away).