Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: A bad habit of the Open Source culture

Author:Kurt Granroth
Posted:8/3/1999; 8:33:27 AM
Topic:Microsoft response to Instant Messaging
Msg #:9059 (In response to 9057)
Prev/Next:9058 / 9060

Linux has had (to be brutal), a "don't carry the wounded" philosophy. In the eyes of the old-time Linux community, a ten year old Mac app with its CMT and use of out-dated APIs, would be wounded. In that philosophy, it is better to leave it and move on.

Hmm.. can you give examples where the Linux community has abandoned old software? I'm thinking of all of the old athena and xlib based apps written in the 70's (i.e., 'xterm' which was written before X itself) that work just fine on modern day Linux. Offhand, I can't think of a single case where an "old" piece of software will not run on a newer system.

On the flip side, Linux has a huge advantage that it is fairly FORWARD compatible. Linux critics like to mention how the libc5/glibc change is making software "incompatible". In fact, this change shows a strength of Linux -- it is possible with a little bit of work to make a Linux system that will run any bit of software from the past as well as anything from the future.

I could take my disks with Linux 1.0.54 on them and install some ELF libc5 libs (1.0.54 was still a.out based), a glibc lib, and a few other newer libs and I'd have a working system. I am tempted to see if I can get the new CORBA based KDE working on 1.0.54. This would be akin to getting ActiveX/COM based Office to work on Win3.1 or DOS...

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:51:41 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.