Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Word of Mouth

[Michał Masłowski]

> What if the company who makes this software goes out of business or stops
> supporting this program?  Wouldn't you like somebody else to be able to
> support this program in the future so you can keep using it?  IBM laid off
> a lot of the people who originally invented large parts of Lotus Notes.
> There are parts of Lotus Notes which cannot be updated because there is
> nobody left who understands the code, and the people who are hired cannot
> figure it out.

This is specific to proprietary software since IBM employs not enough
and not skilled enough programmers, or since less maintainable designs
are used than typically in free software?  Software that is freed at
once after years of development would have the same problem.  What you
wrote clearly applies to software that no one has source code of.

> What if the company who makes this software decides to stop supporting this
> program on the hardware that you have.  They would make you buy a new phone,
> computer, or whatever.  Wouldn't you want someone else to be able to fork off
> a version that still works on the equipment you have?

I like this example, seeing how many Android devices have no source
available and have technical restrictions preventing users from
installing modified versions.  Phones can be used for much longer than
produced if software on them can be adapted.

> What if the company who makes this software decides to change the behavior
> so that the software is less good for you, such as Tivo making it harder to
> skip the commercials in recorded television programs.  Tivo lets you see the
> source, but they DON'T let you run the program after you change it, so if 
> they decide you have to watch commercials, you have no choice.  That is an
> important difference between Open Source Software and Free Software.

Tivoization is one of the reason why I try to avoid calling source code
access or having a free license equivalent to a program being free.

I think common features of most of these examples that user chooses what
to use the software for (not the developer) and that the software is
used for a longer time, are significant here.

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