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Open source as software obsolescence insurance (Linux-Watch)
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
considers the advantage of open-source software against
obsolescence.
"Lance Ulanoff, my colleague at PC Magazine, has a problem. One of his favorite applications is the Macromedia vector-based drawing tool, Freehand. Those of you who pay close attention to software as a business already know where this tale is going.
Macromedia was bought out by Adobe Systems last year. Guess who owns Freehand's chief rival, Illustrator? Why, yes, it's Adobe.
So, Lance went in to talk to Adobe about their plans for Freehand... I'll make a long story short: the future doesn't look good for Freehand."
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Open source as software obsolescence insurance (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 7, 2006 19:02 UTC (Fri) by pj (subscriber, #4506) [Link] I've never understood why more businesses don't see the dangers of proprietary systems due to the "proprietor" going out of business, being acquired, or otherwise "going away". While I wasn't otherwise a big fan of BitKeeper, I did like the company's pledge to opensource its software should it go out of business - I wish more software companies would make similar pledges for cases of both the death of the company and the death of a product line...
Open source as software obsolescence insurance (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 7, 2006 21:27 UTC (Fri) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link] Ah, certainly a good idea and I make it a point to advise my clients accordingly, but, people who play in that non-free world can't always do that as they sometimes don't own copyrights to all of the code in their product and so don't have the right to do so.
Plus, wouldn't you need not only the code but the build tools as well?
all the best,
drew
Open source as software obsolescence insurance (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 7, 2006 22:33 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] It's such a pity about Freehand, as it's a wonderful piece of work. (Better than Illustrator, if I may be so bold...)
Open source as software obsolescence insurance (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 8, 2006 7:35 UTC (Sat) by drosser (guest, #29597) [Link] I view Free Software as Career Obsolescence insurance as well.
Open source as software obsolescence insurance (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 8, 2006 10:35 UTC (Sat) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link] It would be useful to talk about software escrow in this context - this is how commercial software purchasers ensure that if the software company goes bust, they have access to the source code.
I'm not an expert on software escrow, but it mainly kicks in when a company goes out of business, and in some cases when it is acquired. However, it mainly applies to large companies as customers, not consumers.
Open source as software obsolescence insurance (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 9, 2006 16:18 UTC (Sun) by in-spec-inc (guest, #4438) [Link] RE: software escrow.
Yes, it would be useful to discuss.
My current work includes consulting for states' efforts to
What I'd suggest for discussion:
o Does there exist even a single use case in which a software
I'd leave aside the question of whether what's in the escrow
-Bill
P.S. In case you haven't guessed, it's hard for me to see how
Open source as software obsolescence insurance (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 9, 2006 16:52 UTC (Sun) by oak (subscriber, #2786) [Link] > o Does there exist even a single use case in which a software> escrow bailed out a customer whose supplier went bust? Good point. I'd say good luck to anybody trying to continue developing something large put together in a proprietary way which you've never seen before and whose original developers are not there to help you with the code ("what this part is *supposed* to do? And why?"...). One of the Open Source's points is not just access to code but to (hopefully large and independent) developer community.
Open source as software obsolescence insurance (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 9, 2006 17:05 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I'd say good luck to anybody trying to continue developing something large put together in a proprietary way which you've never seen before and whose original developers are not there to help you with the code ("what this part is *supposed* to do? And why?"...). You mean like this ? It works... Of course YMMV: the bigger and sloppier codebase the less chanches do you have (remember Mozilla fiasco?) - I'd hate to even try to work with MS Office codebase...
Open source as software obsolescence insurance (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 10, 2006 8:35 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Oh, but if a small company with a few huge customers goes bust, the customers promptly headhunt the (best of the) ex-developers, so they can keep going. Said devs may well rapidly get dispirited at the huge customer's short-term focus and leave, and of course every customer will only get some of the devs, but that tides the customer over for long enough to switch. (That's the common case for code escrow because then the customers have enough leverage over the original producer to force code escrow clauses at all.)
In the end the original software still dies out; just more slowly.
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