As time went by, its shortcomings and limitations became obvious and a new version was needed. But the development has already stagnated because the publisher's interests shifted. And finally when the new version was released, it contained numerous bugs, and many bloggers suddenly found they needed to pay several hundreds dollars of licensing fee under the new license.
Matthew Thomas, a blogosphere personality, wrote an outline for anyone who wants to create an ultimate blogging platform [2] that can stand the test of time and prevent similar incidents from happening again. Requirements included free database backend, open archive formats, and free software.
His article was also the source of a famous remark,
> In the long run, the utility of all non-Free software approaches zero.
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[0] https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2004-pilgrim-freedom0....
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20051107103030/http://mpt.phrasew...
[2] The Movable Type Incident was a major event responsible for the rise of WordPress, which was a new project at that time. Even the name "WordPress" refers to the printing press, in analogue to Movable Type.
But to be fair, that is allmost true of any software, with changing archtectures programming languages etc. but a thousands times yes! With free software you have at least the option of doing the work of migrating.
BSD-licensed low-level unix programs are still quite useful today and are likely to continue to be very useful in coming decades.
I quoted "In the long run, the utility of all non-Free software approaches zero."
hutzlibu said the same problem affects all software, not just non-Free software. In a constantly changing computing environment, even free software is affected. Nevertheless, hutzlibu was in agreement with the "spirit" of the quote, because at least the user still controls the software, and it's possible to migrate.
einpoklum disagreed, using BSD utilities as an example - showing how free software can be unaffected.
Disclaimer: I didn't downvote the parent post - Why is my parent post downvoted? There's really no disagreement here.
> Why is my parent post downvoted? There's really no disagreement here.
I appreciate it, but even if I'd disagreed, that's no reason to downvote.
I wouldn't say I have much more control over the open source software I use. I spent more time fighting desktop Linux than I did fighting Mac OS. I spent hours setting up self-hosted software that's more often than not just passable. Now I control the data, but I'm also responsible for it. I have to worry about updates, backups, migrations and so on.
If I measure how much effort I put into maintaining open source systems vs how many times I've been screwed by commercial software, I'd say both sides are worth considering.
I will concede that in the context of personal-use software this is less applicable than, say, in a business context, but it's still applicable.
But I also cannot let perfect be the enemy of good. There are closed source products I use simply because nothing else does the job and the alternative is the job not getting done. I do not know the solution to this problem, but I want there to be an answer to anti-consumer practices in software design (such as not allowing users to downgrade). I realize this creates all sorts of other issues: security, competitive disadvantage for existing products, difficulty complying with new regulation, etc. so perhaps open source is the only true option, but that locks out a lot of users.
The trouble is, given the vast range of things we do with technology, it may be unreasonable or impractical to create a universal obligation for software developers to provide export facilities that allow transfer of the data in a standard format. For example, what if there is no standard format, perhaps because your software genuinely does something new or in a different way?
Going after hardware developers who try to contain data within their walled gardens isn't a bad idea, though. For example, the GDPR imposes certain requirements on data controllers to provide for data portability, and imposing similar measures on the makers of devices could both solve immediate problems for some users and provide for much more competition in the marketplace.
Huge amounts of software, particularly embedded software, doesn't have any sort of single structured database or a simple set of data files that you could just dump. Even where you do have these things, the dump won't be worth much unless the DB schema or file structure can be successfully interpreted in order to reconstruct the meaning of the underlying data within some other system.
That might or might not be easy, depending on how complicated the original data formats were. If it's something common and widely understood, perhaps some text a user wrote or a photo they saved, that's one thing. But what about something more specialised? Suppose you're moving to a new home. How do you export the training data from the AI in your old smart front door lock, which now recognises your friends and family's faces, so you can set up the smart locks on your new home to recognise the same people?
Unless there are industry standards for representing whatever data you're working with, providing portability between applications or devices that offer similar functionality from different manufacturers/developers is always going to be a problem. Encouraging standardisation is certainly beneficial here, but imposing some sort of blanket obligation on the manufacturers/developers to provide import/export functionality in the absence of any relevant format probably isn't.
Possibly, you could mandate that all software include a working self service data retrieval feature and fine the trust if they shut it off before a certain point in bankruptcy, but that seems heavy- handed and still won't work if there's no money in the accounts.
You committed to a non-Free software solution, the maintainers of which held all the power over the software, denying you the freedom to have the software do as you wish. When they make a decision, it's to maximise their benefit, not yours. (They might also do so incompetently.) When they make a decision against your interests, unfortunately you have little recourse.