Proprietary platforms and you. 318
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I don't see it as much of a problem, a software program is going to work exactly the same as it did when the company was alive... sure things change, evolve, die, repeat... chances are high the underlying hardware would become obsolete before the software does... in heavily proprietary os's like windows it's more of a problem, but unless some legal body was put in place the moment microsoft died which prevented anyone from updating software connected to it, it would simply die over the next 10ish years...
They get support from elsewhere - Usenet, mailing lists, etc. - just like the vast majority of Linux users who have no corporate support or toll-free numbers or email addresses. Or...
mac users don't have this problem since much of the mac os is open source or would be quickly put into the public domain if apple decided to stop working on it...
Should Microsoft go under, or otherwise stop supporting it, how do you plan on activating a copy of Windows XP? It's almost a good thing SCO sued. Once they are creamed in court...
don't kid yourself, linux is just another *nix, no different than osx or solaris, etc...
yes, but there's far more investment in what sun or an apple does, so that code would be supported longer, if linux died, not much would happen...
at the end of the day, it's just code, it will ebb and flow to whom ever has the best hardware... sure there will be hicups porting it over, but good code never dies...
oxford
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