Only 10% (or so) of software packages are maintained

Posted Sep 16, 2007 8:37 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: 13 reasons ... by proski
Parent article: Dell produces customized Ubuntu Linux for customers (DesktopLinux)

If you'll take a look on wide (i.e.: non-IT) world you'll find that almost all packages out there are "unmaintained". How come ? Easy: most companies out there are small and don't have anyone who can write/change/support the software. They contact some other firm who can do all this and get the software written. What about support ? It's included (usually) but must be paid on case-by-case basis. So in the end the software is used as-is for years and 5-10-15 years later (when it's really hard to find compatible hardware and software) it's rewritten from scratch (often by some other firm).

It's problem with Windows (where Service Pack can break things and thus will cost money), but with Linux - it's disaster. We can argue that "you should maintain at least an unofficial branch" as much as we can but the fact is: noone will bother. And if Linux can not be used in such environment then only IT firms and huge corporations (who do have the resources to maintain the software) will ever use it.

Only 10% (or so) of software packages are maintained

Posted Sep 17, 2007 12:50 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

All the better for virtualization.

This is exactly how IBM mainframes still exist. They've been doing this crap for going on 20-30 years now. Mainframe applications are typically very closed source. They are made using a mixture of non-portable languages.. a lot of very tightly optimized assembly languages. People have been working on and have modifications made to legacy applications going on several decades.

At work we have cpu boxes from the late ninties, upgraded with 2000-era technology, running software from the eighties with hardware spanning the entire range of years... everything from 1980's terminals and tape drives to modern Linux Suse boxes connecting to the mainframe directly via fiber optics.

Hell, a couple years ago we just got rid of the last of vertical reel mount tape drives and they had internal parts stamped with dates out of the late 1970's.

How does all of this work? Virtualization. It's a standard part of any large IBM thing. It's one of their huge selling point and without it the whole mainframe market would fall to peices.

Sure, sure, backward compatability is nessicary. It's VERY good to have.

But it's a double-edged sword. It's a boat anchor on the ship of progress.

So Linux needs a balanced approach.. It needs to keep good backward compatability, within reason... ie fix bugs that break backward compatability... keep duplicate functionality if it doesn't cost much. etc etc. It needs to make programming very easy so that people who do need new apps can quickly and cheaply get them, open source helps this quite a bit. It also needs to take advantage of virtualization and emulation that has good usability to provide for very long-term backward compatability.