On Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 01:22:31PM +0300, Nadav Har'El wrote: > Ok, then, forget Israeli products. What about Lotus Word Pro, then? This > used to be a popular format, and where I work (IBM) used to be *the most* > popular format, more than Microsoft Word, as recently as 10 years ago. Then, > over a period of a few years, people suddenly started switching to Microsoft > Word, to the point that nowadays Lotus Word Pro is no longer available in > IBM - anywhere (even though IBM owns Lotus!). Once in a while I hear people > who tell me they are stuck with some old "lwp" or "prz" files, and don't know > how to read them.
That's even smaller than Irael. Lotus Word Pro (formerly AmiPro) was never a big deal. IBM used it because they owned Lotus, but no one else did. However along that line, what happened to AmiPro? Can you read the documents? What about Word Perfect. I happen to have WP4. and 5.1 for DOS, but most people don't. I also happen to have WordStar 3.3 for DOS. > So you agree it's not an Israel-specific thing, then. Yes and compared to India or China Israel is a very tiny island in a big sea. There are probably 100 times the computer users who don't use latin letters in either country than the total population of Israel. RTL is a small time thing, comparatively, but big in our less than friendly neighbors. Due to piracy issues many programs that were not copy protected required dongles for Hebrew support. For example, Word Perfect and Nisus. > Obviously. This was just an example - maybe I shouldn't have used an Israeli > example... Well, it's important on this list. :-) > No, that's not what I meant! I meant that when Qtext died, it died completely > - > nobody is able to read their old qtext files, and they're screwed. If MS-Word > dies, however, people are not screwed, because they still have OpenOffice, > Koffice, Antiword, and a lot of other programs who can read MS-Word documents. > Because of that, ironically, what makes MS-Word a relatively "safe" format > for long-term-document-preservation is not the strong backing of the Microsoft > company, but rather the small free-software projects that reverse-engineered > the format it and created unofficial readers for it. I think we agree on that. > But wait a minute - because OpenOffice is free software, you are not limited > to buying the latest version that is sold in the store. If you wish, you can > get OpenOffice version 1 now, and run that. If there was enough interest in > the public, you'd even have binary distributions including OpenOffice version > 1. With proprietary software, you can't do that: once Microsoft decided to > dump Word 8 and move to Word 9, there's no way you can get Word 8 any more. > In 10 years, Word 8 will no longer run on any modern computer, and nobody can > do anything about it. However, how many peole here have Fortran II, Cobol, PL/I, Algol 60, "B" compilers? There's just a good a chance that no one will have a GCC 3 compatible compile, X11 libraries, etc. My 1988 Macintosh SE will happily boot an original "system" disk and run the first version of MacWrite, but my friend's MacBook won't. She simply has no way short of an emulator (which may or may not exist or work properly) to read documents she wrote with her 1985 Mac 512Ke. What about all those computers that have long since disappered. How do you run software for them? I doubt the programs I wrote in the 1960's for HP basic systems, or IBM 1130 systems (in fortran and assembly language) could even be compiled today, let alone run. Or the COMPASS programs I wrote for the CDC 6400. > Similarly, it is conceivable (although probably not true) that if I take a > paper I wrote 14 years ago in troff (see the typeset results in > http://nadav.harel.org.il/papers/eigen.ps.gz) and try to run today's groff > on it, I'll run into a few problems. If I do, and if I can't get the new > version to work, then all I have to do is to get a 10 year old version of > groff, compile it, and use it. I won't be trivial, but it will be legal, > and very possible. It depends upon who you are. You might be able to do it. I've done similar things, and thank you very much, I'm probably not going to do them again. > If this is important enough to you, you can pay a programmer to do it for > you! Maybe, 30 years ago, Mainframe assembly language programmers were common. Now they are not. Finding someone who could even read the code may be impossible. > > Moreover, with Free Software, you don't need to write a program to convert > version 1 to version 30 - you can attempt the (usually) easier task of > compiling the old version 1 program on the current system. I'm glad you said attepmt. See above. > > I don't agree. It is possible that had OpenOffice not existed, then > KOffice, Abiword, or something else would have become the most popular > office application for Linux, and perhaps the extra attention would have > made them even better than they are today. I don't want to speculate on that. Your view is possible, but it may be that without Open Office and the hype from Sun, Linux would have never have reached the "market penetration" it has on the desktop. IMHO most of it is hype anyway, 99.99% of the people that use open soure software will never be able to fix it on their own, or afford to pay someone to do it for them. My experience with open source software varies all of the map. From great response from the author to use the Wiki (which did not exist) for big reports, to plain old ignoring my emails. The same thing with commercial software too, I've had good response from small companies and large ones too, and have been ignored or brushed off by them too. > > Besides, Free Software release by a commercial company is still Free Software, > and we shouldn't stigmatize it for being "less free", when it is actually just > as free as any free software. No, but I can tell you offline at least one open soure product that I believe a proprietary drop in replacement with a real QA department and fairly paid programmers behind it would sell like hotcakes iu a year or two. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/ ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
