[PLUG] Abandonware problem and ScummVM...

[Michael Robinson]

On Wed, 2009-04-22 at 00:26 -0700, m0gely wrote:
> Michael Robinson wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Windows 2000 (NT5) has over a year of support left, hardly abandoned. An 
> OS is made up of many technologies. MS couldn't open source older 
> versions of Windows any easier than IBM could OS/2. There is a lot of 
> 3rd party licensed code in there, and some code is still used in current 
> OS's from the old day. Look at the Fonts control panel applet in Win 
> 3.11 and then in Vista for example. It's identical (and pathetic). And 
> Vista/7 has enormous amounts of NT code still in it.
> 
> > The government could step in... <snip>

I've heard this argument before and I'm not buying it.  The government
which recognizes copyright could step in and retroactively change the
rules.  Even though Microsoft is afraid to open source old versions of
Windows, the government has no reason to be afraid.  If you honestly
believe that only proprietary software makes money, why do you have
so much faith in Linux anyways?

Copyright is not supposed to protect a company from competition forever.
Microsoft is a monopoly because noone is allowed to work from any of
it's old OS'es.  Efforts to replicate functionality and achieve driver
compatability are taking decades to get anywhere, see ReactOS.  Some old
computers can't support ReactOS even now, but there's no effort to clone
Windows 95 for those machines.  OS/2 should be open source.  Frankly,
I'd like to see what the OSS community can do with OS/2.