[oclug] Open Source Oppositions Get Serious

[Milan Budimirovic]

On Sun, 2002-10-06 at 15:21, Rod Giffin wrote:
> On Sunday 06 October 2002 02:16 pm, Milan Budimirovic wrote:
> > No, but it was the original poster who was making the claim that
> > proprietary software is some sort of protection from applications that
> > cannot read their own legacy file formats. That claim is positively
> > false:
> 
> Actually, the original poster (I'm assuming you mean Robert Echlin) did not 
> make that point.  You (and others obviously) assumed he did, but he didn't.  
> Although his point wasn't delivered all that well, all he said was [sic] that 
> having open source tools is **no guarantee** that you'll be able to read the 
> files they create 20 years later.  (emphasis mine)
> 
> And - that is true, simply because we don't have any clue what will happen 5, 
> 10 or even 15 years from now.
> 
> There are all sorts of reasons why you might not be able to read them after 
> that length of time, and not many of the reasons have anything to do with the 
> tool that was used to create the files.  This is actually one of the biggest 
> hurdles facing the document management industry right now.
> 
> Rod.

Well, here's the original post:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Public organizations often need access to old data, like dozens of years
old. For that reason, they should use data formats for which tools will
always be available, or can be re-created. Whether the tools they
currently use are still available is irrelevant.

If they use Open Source tools because the tools will "always be
available", they will lose out. The tools will always be upgraded, and
the old ones left behind. After 20 versions or so, do you think the new
versions will read the old data correctly? Not very likely.

Robert
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

The second paragraph is ambiguous, although on reflection I must confess
that your interpretation of it is probably better than the one in my
previous post.

In any event, open file formats, proper documentation and adherence to
standards are all part and parcel of the ethos of free software. That
is, it's not all about the source code or distribution -- the "tools" as
you will. Of course the question then becomes: how good is the free
software/OSS world at practising what they preach?