Re: [Pan-users] Re: OT: freedomware vs... Was: Building Pan on Windows?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 10:57:29 am Leslie Newell wrote:
> > What?
> >
> > If you're talking about the period between *purchasing* Windows
> > (usually as part of a bundle with the computer) and when it goes
> > into lock-down mode because you haven't registered, I think you're
> > missing the point of "try before you buy" is that you get to try
> > *before* you buy.
>
> How about
> <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/cc442495.aspx>.

Fascinating. 

Of course, that's only one of their OS products, and not one which is 
available for sale through retail channels. Still, I learned something 
new, thanks.


> Alternatively it is perfectly legal to borrow a Windows CD from
> someone and install it. 

Only if they delete their Windows install first.


> It will work for a time before you have to either register or
> uninstall it. 

Oh, sure, in practice you can borrow somebody else's Windows CD, but 
that's not an authorised demo version or evaluation copy, that's 
out-and-out copyright infringement and violation of the licence terms. 
Naturally, Microsoft currently has no way of *knowing* that you have 
violated the licence, nor would they care so long as it's only used a 
temporary demo. In fact, they've demonstrated that as little as they 
like piracy, they prefer piracy over migration to Linux.

(Migration to Mac doesn't threaten their business model one bit, since 
OS-X is even more restrictive and expensive than Windows. But Linux is 
another story.)


> Most applications that handle data that can sensibly be edited in
> another application at least offer an option to export the data in a
> relatively common format. 

And how does that help you when you no longer have a computer which can 
run the application?


> For instance most CAD packages offer dxf 
> export/import. The problem is that many applications have data that
> only makes sense if it is handled by that application. 

That's nonsense. That's like saying that "many nails only make sense if 
hammered by Brand X of hammer", or "many slices of bread only make 
sense if toasted in Acme Brand toasters".

Let's suppose you have a really narrowly-focused niche application: CAD 
for designing ergonomic cheese-graters. Your CAD application has all 
sorts of fancy customized data that only makes sense for 
cheese-graters, and other CAD apps can't use it because they don't 
understand cheese-graters. Okay, I get that, your app exists in a tiny 
little niche.

Why can't there be other cheese-grater CAD applications? Some day your 
application will no longer be supported, the hardware it runs on will 
no longer exist, but cheese-graters will still exist and people will 
still want to read the old CAD files.



> For instance 
> my CAM software stores heavily processed CAD drawings. There is no
> point making the data format open because there is no other
> application that could make any sense of it. If my code was open
> source you could then use the data but we have already discussed why
> that is not practical.

I'm sure you have your reasons for wanting to keep the data format 
proprietary. That just makes you part of the problem *wink*


> IMHO the greatest threat to long term storage of data is failure to
> back it up.

That's certainly one threat.

I have thousands of files on 800K Macintosh floppy disks, and since I'm 
very aware of how unreliable floppies are, I have two or three backups 
of each. Unfortunately, I have no floppy disk drive capable of reading 
them, no Mac capable of executing the applications on them, and even if 
I did, no way of networking such a Mac with my main computer or the 
Internet.



-- 
Steven D'Aprano