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

Peter wrote:

> Try to run a game from that period 

Maybe that's the difference... I don't run games :)

> With formats, I have my own bad experiences and those of close relatives
> whose irreplaceable autobiographies were written on ancient versions of
> something or other ...

"Something or other" is probably not a good thing to use to write an
autobiography :)  I just said that I had quite good experiences reading
older Word documents with newer Word versions. YMMV, especially of course
with other word processors.

> ... and which they were no longer able to open 10 years later. I had to
> tinker with scripts and filters for two weeks ...

Where was the original program? If it's a Windows program, I think there
are good chances that it still runs on more recent machines (and be it in a
virtual machine with only MS-DOS installed).

> By the way, their (my elderly relative's) email does not work *again*. I
> *wonder* how come my email never seems to be broken. Lucky guess? 

My lucky guess is that this is because you're an expert user and they are
not. FWIW, I'm using Windows, and am reasonably enough "expert" so that my
email never is broken either -- which seems to indicate that this is not a
system problem, but more of a user problem.

Gerhard

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