MS To Finally End OEM Licensing For Windows 3.11 388
halfEvilTech writes with an excerpt from Ars Technica's story on the sputtering out of Windows for Workgroups 3.11: "Believe it or not, that headline is not a typo. John Coyne, Systems Engineer in the OEM Embedded Devices group at Microsoft, has posted a quick blog entry that broke the bad news: as of November 1, 2008, Microsoft will no longer allow OEMs to license Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the embedded channel. That's exactly 15 years after it shipped in November 1993! Poor OEMs have so much to put up with these days; first Windows XP, and now this!"
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
Discontinued products should be made available consistent with the spirit of the
original intent of US Copyright and the actual relevant Constitutional language.
Anything that patented is already "protected" in terms of "personal private property".
Further obfuscation simply isn't necessary. Furthermore, it's entirely moot since
anything patented has to be disclosed anyways (there are no secrets involved).
There may be complications in using the source but that's a situation that exists
already with Free Software.
If it's not worth the author keeping for sale anymore then it should quickly enter
the public domain. Abandonware should quickly go PD across the board.
It's really the only way to make quasi-perpetual copyright not stiffle new creators.
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Abandonware (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Abandonware (Score:2, Insightful)
Not if you use that software to remove the rights of others.
Re:Its not a joke, it can be serious (Score:1, Insightful)
An industry which does not think about the future deserves everything it gets when the future smacks it in the face. You cannot run your company on the basis that product X, technology Y or hardware component Z will always be available and always supported. Forward planning is part of business.
Re:And elsewhere (Score:5, Insightful)
With gas at $4.00+ per gallon, that horse-drawn carriage is looking more and more appealing.
Does anyone know who's using it in embedded? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see this as a niche product, one that fits perfectly.
Embedded controller. Low memory use. Weak (therefore cheap/easy on electricity) chip. Networkable, but no TCP/IP (no Internet can be good, i think our Canon copiers got the slammer worm a few years back).
Re:Abandonware (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah.... and that's a great decision on Apple's part, BUT, I'd really like to see them continue that tradition by making MacOS 9.1 free, or at least do it for 8.6 and 8.1?
They no longer sell a single computer that is even designed to run any of these older MacOS versions, and I can't imagine they really make any worthwhile profit on sales of new copies of any of them at this point in time?
System 7.5.3 was a popular "milestone" release of MacOS because it had a lot of basic functionality, but still a small enough footprint to run on real early vintage Macs. But I'd also argue versions 8.1, 8.6 and 9.1 were "key" as well.
For people with still "vintage" but relatively recent and more powerful Macs like the PowerMac 9xxx, 8xxx and even 7xxx series - it seems silly limiting it to System 7.5.3, just because that was the most recent freely available version you could get?
I believe you needed to get to version 8.1 to even support such concepts as using your own image file as a desktop background?
Re:Abandonware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't agree.
I have a problem with the idea of software becoming open sourced just because the users want it. If you knowingly agree to be bound by a license, you should honor that agreement unless the licensor acts in an unconscionable way, and then your own actions should only be sufficient to address the specific issue. Everybody knows vendors stop supporting old software. You can't complain if the vendor gives you a couple years to upgrade and then pulls support, because you bought the license to use the software knowing this could happen.
This is important. This is why businesses and individuals should use open source software wherever possible: in order to control their future. Much of the open source software I use is because I don't like the license restrictions of the proprietary alternative.
People and organizations should support open source and free software rather than make deals with proprietary vendor then renege on them. And if people should be so cavalier with licenses, then the same applies to free licenses as well.
Re:And elsewhere (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that's not the Microsoft situation.
They are much more like GM in this respect: able to be largely
oblivious to non-trivial user requirements and completely able
to ignore anything as saavy as planning for the future or
anticipating new trends.
Re:Its not a joke, it can be serious (Score:5, Insightful)
And it goes to show that Stallman is inevitably right.
There's no reason why bits "rot". The only reason is because that software is closed source, and the ONE company ordained to maintain it refuses to do so. This isn't a problem in Free Software, where anybody can pay a programmer to maintain it to X date, regardless if the original creator is long dead (or imprisoned).
This isnt just aimed towards old unmaintained versions of Windows, but also aimed at every piece of code anybody uses that is not documented and opened. If it's closed source, the user is a serf.
Re:You just don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
... and that's why your Windows 3.1 systems were stable. The stability of Windows 9x and earlier versions was susceptible to memory leaks due to their limited USER and GDI space. If your ace programmer had ported his app to Windows 95, it would have been at least as stable. The tick count problem was a stupid bug, true; but it was easy to fix and a patch was released for both 95 and 98. You could easily point to all the Y2K bugs in Windows 3.1 and call it "unstable" too, if you didn't patch it.
Re:Abandonware (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright doesn't prevent you from writing your own software. Patents do but that's another thing and patents won't affect the end-user anyway.
But I have two questions about this public domaining / open sourcing thingy.
Re:You just don't understand (Score:4, Insightful)
they must have (had) a different kind of Windows 3.1 in your country.
Re:Embedded Windows 3.11 was crazy in 1993. (Score:3, Insightful)
So we'll get embedded vista or whatever comes down the line next. Even better! The companies that use Microsoft have already drunk the coolaid, and will not recover.
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is there is no reasonable definition of Abandonware. Look at an old 1980s arcade game. It's 25+ years since someone made the unit. But there is likely 1. a thriving used market. 2. the current copyright holder for the ROM might want to make some money off selling it as part of an emulation package. This happens all the time, especially now that "retro" sells. All the current game console seems to have a "collection" or "anthology" with a bunch of old games on it. Those have to be licensed and someone is making money off selling those old Midway, Sega, Namco, Taito, etc games.
One issue worth bringing up is that computer software generally doesn't have much aftermarket support. Especially for things like Windows which have a license that is usually non-transferable. Selling your used XP discs seems to be (almost) as illegal as making a copy to install on another computer. Seems strange to me. (I think if you want to call it "stealing" you should at least require that all of it be fully transferable and have no restrictions over physical property).
Of course it is always possible for congress to make a law that would shorten copyrights for software, and thus make abandonware possible. Amend the law so that it automatically expires after 10 year of your last publish date would be reasonable way to do abandonware. But still have it expire if it exceed some time from the date of creation like it currently does (what is it now, like 10,000 years? :)
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me it would be a fair enough rule that software with a sizeable installed base that is abandoned by its creators should be opened to the community, so it can live on or die on its own merits.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree somewhat with this idea - though perhaps more with the specifics added to it by others, than your original idea quoted here.
First, how do we define "abandoned" in this case. The best hard line I can think of off-hand is "when official support is discontinued". But if that is where the line would be drawn, it puts software developers/publishers in a very difficult position. Their own older software because their biggest enemy and competition, like WinXP vs. Vista, except to a much greater extent. For an example, let's bring Win2K into the mix. If Win2K was now legally free to obtain and use because of support being discontinued, how many customers would have purchased XP? And more, how many would have purchased Vista? For the most part Win2K can do all the essential functions that either of the newer versions can do, and with a lot less bloat and overhead to boot. Many users still prefer Win2K, even at an equal price point. So with such an "abandonware is free" rule, now the software company has to tread a very careful path, so as to make their next version just enough better to entice users to switch from the old version, but yet not so good as to make a better version unfeasible. Service packs and major patches would become history; such updates would have to become a new pay-for version of the product. Otherwise, the only option is to keep supporting old versions of software merely so it doesn't become "abandonware" (and therefore free). Even worse would be if the hard line for becoming abandonware is whether or not the product is still sold by the publisher. Then they would not only be locked into perpetually providing support, but also keeping the old product available for sale to compete with the newer versions.
I think the real issues here that need to be addressed are software patents and ridiculous copyright durations. If those get properly fixed, abandonware would become free by default at an appropriate time.
Re:Abandonware (Score:2, Insightful)
If it's not worth the author keeping for sale anymore then it should quickly enter
the public domain. Abandonware should quickly go PD across the board.
So, if an author releases a new version of his program, he should give away the old version for free, thereby reducing the customer base of the new version?
Now that's a great business model...
Re:Abandonware (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet somehow Baen Books does this with their free library.
Au contraire. They allow you to read some of the books for free, in the hopes that you will then purchase the entire series to read when you're not "plugged in". If you think otherwise, then you haven't read the essays you get at the root of the baen free library site.
Those books aren't out of print, they're simply being used as hooks. Same as letting a library loan out the books, except without the intermediary.
Don't get confused about the issues at hand.
Re:Why not open source 3.1/3.11 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire concept of intellectual property (by which I include both patents and copyrights) exists precisely because "users want it" - ie, We-The-People grant the creator a limited monopoly to encourage that entity to do their thing.
Without the "limited" part of that, they, not the users, have broken their end of the bargain.
By explicitly no longer allowing us to license WFW311 (or releasing it into the wild for free), Microsoft has done no less than exploited our beneficence - They've gotten their cash, now they want to take our shared cultural resource away from the very society that allowed them to gain by it.
Unacceptible.
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
I would argue that any license that restricts the 4 fundamental software freedoms is unconscionable.
But your argument would be a pretty weak one, unless you were forced to accept the license. There is very little software you can't live without, and these days there are free alternative to almost everything. You might prefer Windows to Linux, but that's no excuse to obtain Windows under false pretenses.
I'd bet even RMS, who thinks proprietary licensing is evil, isn't going to run an unlicensed copy of Windows in QEMU just so he can test software on it. This is the kind of thing programmers rationalize doing all the time; they're doing Microsoft a favor. Maybe Microsoft secretly agree with them. But the more strongly you believe in the principle, the more up front you should be, even if it becomes confrontational. It's not civil disobedience if you do it in secret.
Some contracts are unconscionable because the nature of the terms were misrepresented to a party that could not be expected to understand them. There was a recent case in the news of a financial advisor who convinced a 90 year old to take money out of the annuity on which she was living and put it into an annuity that matured in sixty years. That's unconscionable. If you license proprietary software, you know darned well you aren't allowed to install it on more than one machine, so you shouldn't agree to that if you think it's wrong.
Some contracts are unconscionable because they are so bad for society they are repugnant. You can't sell your organs, or agree to become an indentured servant. Perhaps you think proprietary software licenses fall into this category. Then don't agree. It's at least as unconscionable for you to offer your kidney for sale to somebody on dialysis with no intention of following through than it is for that person to offer money for it.
It's unconscionable for you to agree to an unconscionable agreement with no intention of following through. It is not only dishonest, it encourages the very things you are supposedly against. If it weren't for "piracy" in the 80s and early 90s, Microsoft would never have become as powerful as it did.
Re:Abandonware (Score:2, Insightful)
If your product (or even service) has truly advanced and kept up with the advancements of others, the only demographic you're likely to loose are going to be those that didn't want/need what you had to offer in the first place, and I'm willing to bet a fair amount of those aren't paying for windows as it is.
Unless you're the type to cut support when your product is still largely used, then it's just your own foot you're shooting anyway.
Re:Abandonware (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, I could argue that licenses like the GPL allow for more rights than are granted under copyright law.
You dont understand copyright law then.
Have a guess what the GPL is. It is a license to COPY that is built on what copyright law allows. What copyright law says is that you, the holder are allowed to permit copying when you want it to be in ways you want it to be.
You can not seperate the two because the GPL IS a copying license and that power to grant the license is given via the law.
Copyright law allows you to to either say "Fuck off, I dotn want any of you cunts to copy my work" or it allows you to say "You can all have it with no conditions" or even to "I permantly withdraw any claim to copyright, this work is now public domain" or it allows you to write a license for what terms and conditions you want for a work to be copied.
As you can now see, the GPL is in fact more restrictive than what copyright law allows for. Because. The GPL can not and would not exist if there is no copyright law. And that is why the GPL will never be successfully challenged - it's heart is a very well known and understood law and you are quite within your rights to licence your work as you see fit.
Copyright law is simply about the rights of the original creator. Licenses are the creator granting another party rights that are the creator's sole area to grant. Now if you dont like the license, that's pretty much your problem.
The only thing wrong with copyright law is it's time limits a work gets protection for. The original intention was for a creator to have a limited time when he controls the work. That time is now far too long. You should be protesting that, not the foundations of the law because it's actually a good and appropriate one.
If you change the law to get what you want, you are reducign the rights of the origonal creator and frankly no one should support that. Copyright has it's place.
And if I dont want to have you copy my work, tough shit for you. Wait until the terms expire. Or connvince me to allow copying.
Re:Abandonware (Score:3, Insightful)
Now this, I must say, is an excellent point. It may not be enough to put WFW in the public domain because people want it, but because that's part of the copyright deal. An individual of course can agree to any terms he wants, but society as a whole ought not be bound by such private agreements.
I'd make two provisos to this, however. First, "open source" or "free" software isn't the same thing as software that is in the public domain. It isn't enough to eliminate the restrictions on people in possession of copies, you'd also have to mandate Microsoft release source and build information. The second proviso is that the works in the public domain can be converted by others into proprietary derivative works, where as free software cannot.
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like all software to be FOSS, but I don't think it should be law.
I do think that source must be published and on file in the Library of Congress in order to receive copyright protection, though. Source must be published so that we can properly study and be enriched by the work. Software is an odd case that the founders could have never foreseen. Really what use is there of the Windows 1.0 binaries when the source is gone? It'd be like trying to read a book without the words, yet the book still being useful. Published source is fundamental to the progress of science and useful arts.
I don't accept is copyright protection on top of patent protection on top of trade secret protection with an EULA thrown in to cover all the bases.
If any proprietary vendor thinks publishing the source is a bad deal, they can always use contract law to keep their customers from copying purchased software. And I would have no problem with that so long as it was a real contract, not a click-thru "contract".
In the end, copyright is supposed to benefit society, not authors of creative works.
Re:Abandonware (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to argue Law, this isn't the place. That would be Groklaw. That aside...
I was inquiring about the purpose of copyright and how it is supposed to encourage the sciences and the arts.
---The only thing wrong with copyright law is it's time limits a work gets protection for. The original intention was for a creator to have a limited time when he controls the work. That time is now far too long. You should be protesting that, not the foundations of the law because it's actually a good and appropriate one.
Copyright and patent was founded as the "best thing" when compared to the European Guild system of secret knowledge and hidden techniques. Mechanical devices to copy were rather scarce when those concepts were implemented in the USA. And if I remember correctly, the President himself signed off on patents as head of the Executive branch.
Now, we have excessive copyright terms and a who-gives-a-shit patent office that signs off on everything, no matter how silly. And no matter how intelligent the founders, we still have a guild system with guilds that cooperate and have non-aggression pacts: Corporations.
---If you change the law to get what you want, you are reducign the rights of the origonal creator and frankly no one should support that. Copyright has it's place.
You fail to understand. Copyright does 0 for non-holders. Copyright with GPL license does X for non-holders. What promotes the sciences and arts more? That is my root question, which you put aside with legal rhetoric. I'm not a lawyer nor do I intend to be one. The Constitution makes the reasoning behind Patents and Copyright well stated.
---And if I dont want to have you copy my work, tough shit for you. Wait until the terms expire.
Unfortunately for you, that's NOT how it works these days. That's how the law works, but the users on Piratebay, Kazaa, and the former Napster have weighed in on their vote. When some might see as a simple money-grab, I see as a massive form of civil disobedience. In the heyday of Napster, there were more users on the service at one time than voted in that presidential election.
When it comes down to it, these people want profit for us sharing with our friends. We were told to share and be friendly when we were young. Do what you can to help friends in need and in want. Now, companies wish us to stop cooperating in sharing so they get fatter wallets. Screw them.
---Or connvince me to allow copying.
Convince me that you're worth any money. You can either be good and request money, or be a dictator and demand money. However, that demand route isnt going rather well.
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortune forbid that anyone take responsibility and think clearly these days. How would we ever hold elections?
Re:Abandonware (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Most companies don't pay developers on number of sales. The developers get a fixed salary and it doesn't matter weather one or a million copies were sold.
I'm sure the justification for those fixed salaries depend on there being more than just one copy (or several dozen hundred copies) sold per developer. Money just doesn't materialize out of nothing, even without any currencies based on a precious metal standard.
2. Yes. Being an early adopter doesn't make it "unfair" that future users get it for a lower price or free. The original Doom games cost $40 each, now you can get all of them on a single CD for $10.
But they still cost something. And that's the company itself doing those price reductions. Some games are simply not sold anymore at any price... either they're being held by an IP-only company with no interest of actually making it available or they're just plain abandoned. At least in the US there is no legal entitlement to anyone of so-called abadnonware... so what now?
For the rate of progression in computing, I'd sure like to see patents and copyrights expire in a similarly speedy rate. Personally, 15 years is generous enough to let companies squeeze as many drops of revenue from them as they can (to incentivize the original development), short enough to let people use them in their lifetime, and well past the practical lifetime of the product to make anyone angry.
I mean, I'm not angry that the car I bought in 2002 at a certain price is now worth a quarter of what it was, considering the use I've gotten out of it at the time.
Re:Abandonware (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, even if the software becomes public domain -- which might be a good idea -- that's not really the biggest problem users have. The biggest problem is getting support.
It's important not to confusing public domain and free software. Free software includes access to source code and any trade secret or other IP embodied in that source code. Chances are you aren't so much concerned about copying your abandonware to different hardware, as keeping it running, if necessary on hardware that didn't exist back in the day. For that you need source, and the right to do things with the source. You need free software.
Re:Abandonware (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wake up and smell the Blue (Score:4, Insightful)
IBM is a great test to determine if someone knows anything about IT beyond what they read on Slashdot.
Re:Abandonware (Score:3, Insightful)
And then we get to the term length of copyright. Windows 1.0 is public domain in 2080. Do you think anyone will even have such a binary laying around and would it be useful for 2080 technology?
Having just the binary is not useful for using Windows 1.0 as a base for further works. I don't need the script of a public domain movie nor do I need the sheet music of a public domain song to create a work based on those works. I do need the source code to a piece of software in order to do make anything other than trivial modifications.
Re:Abandonware (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted.
Although, I don't think click-wrap licenses should be contracts since they are inherently one-sided and no good-faith negotiation can occur.
Re:Abandonware (Score:1, Insightful)
No, novakyu isn't making any bizarre logical contortion. You are just so used to copyright that its effects on the market are a blind spot for you.
Copyright is when the government steps in and distorts a market by awarding temporary monopolies to people. Without copyright, if I didn't like the service you were providing, I could go to a competitor and get the exact same thing from them. "The market would decide" between the good vendors and the bad vendors. But because copyright exists, I can't do that because no other vendors are allowed to distribute copies. You're the only person who can do that because you have the copyright.
This is more obvious in the music industry. It's often easier and more convenient to obtain music via illicit means than legitimately. For example, there's a lot of songs you simply can't buy online. But you can download them for free illegally. There's a lot of songs that you can buy, but only in particular formats, or encumbered with DRM. Pirates offer a better service. That's what the allofmp3 business was about. It wasn't about getting stuff for free - allofmp3 charged money for their services - it was about paying a competitor because they offered a better service. That's letting the market decide. And copyright takes that away.
Now feel free to argue that it is right and proper to distort the market in this way, but it certainly isn't "letting the market decide". This is not a free market we are talking about.
Re:Its not a joke, it can be serious (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing about OSS is that it's POSSIBLE to maintain "abandoned" software. That doesn't guarantee that such software WILL be maintained, but it's still better than proprietary software, which guarantees that abandonware WON'T be maintained by anyone.