In the 90s and early 2000s server uptime might be counted in multiple years and extremes in the decades

The industry can barely keep an npm update from breaking the world now.. and that’s build tools and environments and so it’s independent of “we use stable languages”

Now add the possibility of political sanctions on ISA licensing and you have -

Hardware that’s fails quicker and may not be available to buy, software that barely builds months later, and a world where the US president can sanction entities at will if they don’t comply…

Yeah, open source isn’t all that’s required

I do remember a Freebsd 2.2 server, that after it's setup in 98, reached 800 days of uptime without any kernel upgrade, but the main reason for that, we were too afraid to do an upgrade, let alone a reboot, because if the server hadn't started, getting to it physically with a new boot CD, would have been a big issue. And that was the single server that the company had at that time, for a long time :)

If you worked with Sun equipment years would be familiar and 10+ years not uncommon, and 20+ within your groups folklore

> In the 90s and early 2000s server uptime might be counted in multiple years and extremes in the decades

I know uptimes were a flex back in the day but now a long uptime is an indicator that maybe you’re treating your machine as a pet instead of cattle.

They can run, but if one of the computer-related parts breaks down your only choice is scrounging eBay for replacement parts because (as an example) the software is proprietary and it runs on a weird MCA card with really precise timing and strong anti-piracy measures.