Re: Ada is getting more popular!

["Thomas Løcke" <tl@ada-dk.org>]

On 2010-10-28 15:01, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> This is what I meant, a car you cannot drive is not a car.


Of course it's a car. I might've customized it for racing purposes, or
other special needs.


> For how long?


I don't know, but not now.


> Maybe yes, maybe no. The Pirate bay guys thought they have a right to turn
> on a server and put it in the Internet. They were convicted in Sweden, an
> EU member.


No "maybe" about it. You can sell used software in EU without issue.

There's a ruling from the EU court.


> Let you buy a necktie, which later goes out of fashion. That is your tie
> and your problem.


Not the same thing.

The tie is a one-shot expense, and it does indeed go out of style, 
sooner or later.

This specific software has been kept "modern" by regular updates (paid
for by me). Never once have the vendor hinted that they would one day,
abruptly, kill the product.

The interesting part was that they actually accepted payment of $15K
for adding some very minor features, only 6 months prior to dumping the
product.


> You should require MS to keep Windows backward compatible.


Yes, well....


> Economically open source does not solve the problem. Because software
> developing vs. maintenance costs are estimated 1 to 10. That means,
> economically it just does not make any sense to maintain others' products
> at any statistically relevant scale. It can function only as a rare
> exception, i.e. economically irrelevant.


I'm not asking the vendor to maintain software from another vendor. I'm
asking them to maintain their own software, which I've bought and paid
for.

I've bought the software.
I've paid monthly service/support-fees since day one.
I've paid for numerous new features.

Never once has the vendor told me "By the way Thomas, please note that
in a few years we'll stop supporting this product". Or something
similar.

Open source would've solved my problem. Open source would've made sure
that my 17 employees could count on still having a job in the near
future.

With black box software you simply never know. One day you're happily
running your business, the next it's all tumbling down on you. And I'm
of course only referring to businesses which rely on software as a part
of their core product.

-- 
Regards,
Thomas L�cke

Email: tl at ada-dk.org
Web: http:ada-dk.org
IRC nick: ThomasLocke