Re:The Windows Update Marathon in a VM: From Windows 1.01 to XP
by CharlesColeman on Thursday November 07, 2019 @10:12AM
(#21473848)
> might as well not maintain anything at all.
I think the issue here is that you're viewing this as too all-or-nothing. If the OS/2 subway software is well-tested and does everything it needs to do, what's the benefit of spending $10 million rewriting it or paying a guy to keep up with platform changes? If IBM (or whoever owns it now) keeps maintaining OS/2 so the software can run with little to no modifications on new hardware (since hardware fails), good on them. There's probably 1,000 such systems, and that's $10 billion in savings for society.
That doesn't mean no software should actively be maintained, a lot of it should. It also doesn't mean that working old systems shouldn't sometimes be replaced or upgraded. But it does mean backwards compatibility is important and shouldn't be dismissed.
I think the issue here is that you're viewing this as too all-or-nothing. If the OS/2 subway software is well-tested and does everything it needs to do, what's the benefit of spending $10 million rewriting it or paying a guy to keep up with platform changes? If IBM (or whoever owns it now) keeps maintaining OS/2 so the software can run with little to no modifications on new hardware (since hardware fails), good on them. There's probably 1,000 such systems, and that's $10 billion in savings for society.
That doesn't mean no software should actively be maintained, a lot of it should. It also doesn't mean that working old systems shouldn't sometimes be replaced or upgraded. But it does mean backwards compatibility is important and shouldn't be dismissed.