Re: [OT] : Open Source from the user perspective (was Re: [EE]: opinion on Willem programmer?)

Cedric Chang <cc <at> nope9.com> writes:
> source becomes available to users of the IP.  I don't want to see  
> this as a law.... rather as a standard practice that buyers expect  
> from vendors.  I have seen many wonderful products disappear when the  
> vendor disappears and no one knows where the vendor or the IP got to.

It is not a law it is reality. Talk to someone in the telco, scientific, medical
electronics, aerospace or military technology domains and you will see that
these industries have 'slightly' more concern for the lifetime of their
investments than the average mp3 player maker, salesman or buyer. In the second
hand, services (like maintenance and operations)  and refurbished equipment
markets there are two options for each complex piece of equipment: a) provide
documentation including pin-outs and some arcane details and sell for the going
price or b) sell for the price it is worth on the scrap metal market.

It's the 'consumer' slant on electronics which has propagated into software that
is causing the current problem, sometimes known as upgrade-itis. It is bad
enough that one's <censored popular word processing program> documents tend to
'lose' formatting and tables whenever a <censored popular operating system
maker> upgrades some library or the program itself (and that happens every 3-4
years at most, or so I have seen it happen during the last 13+ or so years). Now
how do you use documentation in that format when the time comes, say, 10 years
into the lifespan of a product that is meant to last 20+ years? Oops? I was
reading recently that the aeronautical industry *still* uses microfiches
attached to a special kind of punched card to maintain and distribute data about
spare parts. Surely that is not an accident in an industry that used computers
since before almost anyone else did.

And we are not talking tool-chain and drivers yet, just pin-outs scrambled by
formatting loss. I have seen schematics drawn in programs that no longer exist,
which could no longer be opened (and the price tags of the unique tools someone
makes to allow that anyway). And on and on and on. There were several postings
on this list some time ago, about some small software or hardware tool provider
who was suddenly not answering emails and the phone, for very serious (health?)
reasons. I believe that some company eventually took the relevant product over.
I do not remember the details.

I try to do what I preach. Since I had to do a lot with old architectures and
refurbishing and testing and such I tried very hard to use only open source
tools (both hard and soft). I even made my own when there was time for this, 
for that reason. 2N2022s and other standard parts are still around after 20+
years of doing things like this. It has paid off.

Just for laughs, and slightly off topic, I found some old *nix source code on
the net, from ~1985 or so, compiled it after minor cosmetics (header files
changed etc) on a recent machine and it worked. Manual pages looked right
(tables and all), X11 GUI and timing delays work in despite of 200 times faster
execution and all that.

Peter

--

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist