Re: Economics and the GPL
Matt Seitz <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.emulators.wine.license |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
"Joerg Mayer" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... >5 Years is a very long time. Would you want to use a 5 year old gcc or linux >desktop or linux kernel? Well, in 1997, InfoWorld named Red Hat Linux 5.0 "Operating System of the Year". So apparently it was a useful operating system even then. Naturally, if I were a developer, I would prefer to use the latest and greatest. But a 5 year old Linux and gcc would be better than starting from scratch. >OTOH, it would still be quite nice to be explicitely allowed to decompile >Win97 right now or legally copy old console games. Exactly. Imagine if someone could sell PCs with Win95 today, without paying Microsoft a licensing fee. Or a school being able to install Win95 on donated computers. You might not be able to run the very latest software, but a lot would still run. I'm not wedded to the 5 year number. Maybe 3 years is better, maybe 7, maybe 10. But 5-7 seems about right. Looking again at Win95, it is old enough that Microsoft has essentially abandoned it, but recent enough to still be useful. ===== Sincerely, Matt Seitz __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com