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Comment by interpol_p | Hacker News Reader

Why do you and many others treat software as if it is a sacred artefact that must be kept and preserved and be able to be run for all future generations?

Humans are producing so much content right now in the form of software, art, movies, writing. Does it really matter if we leave some behind? Do we need to preserve every piece of information we generate?

I have software on the App Store that I cherish that unfortunately will never be updated past 32 bit (too much work). But I don't care, nor do I feel the need to preserve it.

You say there is no benefit to this move. But this move significantly reduces Apple's technical debt and support requirements and is likely to be worth the tradeoff for future developers and future software on the platform.

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> Humans are producing so much content right now in the form of software, art, movies, writing. Does it really matter if we leave some behind? Do we need to preserve every piece of information we generate?

Everybody should be able to decide for themself what they consider as important and what should be preserved. So I strongly oppose when the benevolent/malevolent dictator decides that you have to leave this piece behind.

> I have software on the App Store that I cherish that unfortunately will never be updated past 32 bit (too much work). But I don't care, nor do I feel the need to preserve it.

But others perhaps care. So I strongly encourage you to open-source it if you don't care about it anymore.

No they shouldn't. Those people should either update their software or force their users to stay on legacy devices. It should not be Apple's responsibility to not move forward and continue to complicate their environment for the benefit of the few.

> So I strongly oppose when the benevolent/malevolent dictator decides that you have to leave this piece behind.

There is no one dictating that. The source code is still in the hands of developers, and your advice to me was to "open source it." All developers of 32 bit apps have that option, and they also have the option to maintain their source going forward.

Apple's decision to shed technical debt shouldn't be seen as them eschewing some moral responsibility to support old software.

> But others perhaps care. So I strongly encourage you to open-source it if you don't care about it anymore.

I would consider it if I still had the source. But you should realise that saying "open source it" trivialises the amount of effort and emotion required to do so. Sharing your work with the world (especially if you are embarrassed by old code you have written) is not something that everyone finds easy to do. I would feel obligated to update the code, write build instructions and a readme file at the very least.

That would take a good few days of my time to make the code "presentable" before I would be willing to share it. I don't have the mental or emotional energy to devote to that task.

> > So I strongly oppose when the benevolent/malevolent dictator decides that you have to leave this piece behind.

> There is no one dictating that.

Apple is.

> dictator decides that you have to leave this piece behind

They aren't dictating that you have to leave this piece behind.

They are dictating that you have 9 months to either port your code to 64 bit, leave it behind, open source it. Or whatever else you want to do.

They are dictating that the end user leave this piece behind. The developer could be dead or out of business.

Granted, they have been doing this for a long time -- you can't easily install older versions of software, for example.

You can very easily install older versions of software. If you make a local iTunes backup, you can keep the apps and reinstall them locally. If you have an older device that doesn't support the newest version of the app, you will be prompted that there is an older version available that us compatible and be allowed to download it.

The former option works on all iOS devices ever made, the latter works at least as far back as iOS 5 devices.

The former stopped working in iOS 9.

You can't restore local copies of apps that you backed up using iTunes in iOS 9? But you can download older copies of apps on a first gen iPad? That's weird if that's what you are saying. I was able to download older apps on my 1st gen iPad about a month ago.

Edit:

Are you sure it stopped working? You can't download an older version of an app on a non supported OS unless you either previously downloaded a version before on a compatible device or used iTunes and bought the app on a computer.

Edit 2:

Apparently you still can download the app to your computer directly using iTunes but you can't back it up to your device.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.macworld.com/article/3125509/...

> So I strongly oppose when the benevolent/malevolent dictator decides that you have to leave this piece behind.

You don't have to leave it, you just cannot sell it on the App Store or run it in modern devices. By all means, open source the code, publish it, archive it... do whatever you want with it.its not the end of the world and its a sensible decision.

> But others perhaps care. So I strongly encourage you to open-source it if you don't care about it anymore.

This is false thinking in my mind. Others may care, but that does not mean they have the right to guilt someone into releasing the source for _their creation_.

On a grander scale - nothing lasts forever. Not even stars. So, we don't need to preserve everything - this is very egoic mind to me. It is ok to let things die and be forgotten. Software, art, ideas, songs, poems included.

If the creator of these things decides to not release it to the world, that is _their_ prerogative.

The same reason you treat cinema and games the same way. It's not worth destroying all access to The Godfather just because "there's so many other films coming out nowadays"

He isn't saying that. He is saying we shouldn't continue to support tape cassettes because the creator of the Godfather didn't want to update it to DVD.

Stretching the metaphor a bit; but what if the creator is dead? Or can't afford to update it? Does it make the Godfather worthless because of its medium?

The Mona Lisa is deteriorating. Should we also stop efforts to preserve it, because there's so many other paintings out there?

As long as there are people willing to preserve it, then we will preserve it. Few people would ever "stop" efforts to preserve something, it's just going to stop being preserved when there is no one around who cares about it anymore.

There are many millions of paintings that have been lost to time, and there will be many more.

Just because something isn't preserved doesn't mean it is worthless. The transience of human creativity is part of what makes it so beautiful.

If the Godfather was to be removed from existence this instant it would still have value because it has already made a mark on the world and the memories of the people in the world. And will indirectly influence generations to come. Value accrues in the humans who experience the work, not in the work itself.

> As long as there are people willing to preserve it, then we will preserve it.

As long as there are people willing to preserve it, there are still laws (e.g. DCMA) that prohibit people from doing it.

Those laws exist to protect the rights of the creator for a period of time; if they want a thing to pass into history, without openly publishing the source, that's their prerogative.

Even before copyright expiration, anyone can clean-room reimplement a thing in open source if they wanted to, and not be violating copyright. This has been common in OSS. (Samba for example)

The period is effectively infinite now, since congress keeps retroactively extending it.

Also, the SMB protocol does not contain any copyrightable material, like music, sprites, icons, game assets, etc. Copyright law prevents you from faithfully cloning (pixel for pixel) most GUIs and games (so most phone apps)

The Sonny Bono act was passed 19 years ago. 100 years of protection isn't infinite. It also requires an entity to WANT to enforce that copyright. if they exist, then you really don't have a right to pixel clone something - they can keep it buried.

There are plenty of game variants created that capture the feel of prior games without being IP violations

I think the difference is that film has archival formats to keep them around. If you have a film reel you can rescan it for a new format, whether it be VHS, Betamax, DVD, Bluray, HD-DVD or whatever is next. For software we have the source code, but given Apple's iOS ecosystem you are likely tied into that platform (Especially for early software when there was little cross platform tooling.)

The problem with the App Store is that neither users nor developers have a good method for keeping their apps around (other than releasing a binary for jailbroken devices.) You can't just create a DMG and host it on S3 to allow any old iOS device to install because the platform is locked down. The issue is that a lot of the history of mobile gaming is going to be lost (And some already has been with the purging of non-updated apps already happening) because the App Store is the arbiter for users obtaining software.

The "simple" solution is for apple to allow users to install IPA files outside of the App Store, like Android can install APK files. Developers can build their app in an old version of Xcode and put it up for install on their own terms.

Apple does allow developer users to install IPA files outside of the App Store. I can easily take an app off Github, build it with Xcode, and install it on my iPhone, for example. There are even scripts to do this similar to a "configure; make; make install", eg: https://github.com/phonegap/ios-deploy

This doesn't require the $99 it used to either, anyone can do it, though it does require you to get a free signed developer certificate from Apple which signs the app (you'll also need to tell your device to trust your cert).

You can even distribute an IPA file and install it via iTunes and not the App Store, but it needs to be signed by a trusted authority (your company; your dev cert; or most likely Apple, as long as it is a non-revoked cert).

Seriously? That's awesome, I'm really glad Apple's taken that step in the right direction.

Question though, has it had a large impact on popularity of pirated apps if you no longer have to jailbreak to use them?

It should be noted that it's quite limited. You can only install a few of these apps on a given device, and they expire quickly. It's not really practical for sideloading in the general case.

In practice, what people do is they pay something like $5 a year to get added to a shared pool of developer accounts. In China they also had a really slick scam going for a long time involving pools of otherwise-unused enterprise certificates (though I haven't tracked this one recently, and so maybe they got hit even harder than the resigning services have been).

I will also point out that for many of the use cases of piracy, which involves games and other content where the user rapidly get "bored" and moves on to other content, a limit of three at a time for only seven days doesn't matter: people can pirate a few games and play them for a weekend, and then move on to pirate other games.

(If you are curious, I'm of course excited by these things and like explaining them as it further weakens the argument some people try to make that jailbreaking leads to mass piracy, something even the US Copyright Office doesn't believe; but this line of analysis makes the whole situation more obvious ;P;)

> This doesn't require the $99 it used to either, anyone can do it, though it does require you to get a free signed developer certificate from Apple which signs the app (you'll also need to tell your device to trust your cert).

There's a limit of 3 installs per device, though. And you'll have to re-sign the app every 7 days if you choose to go down this path.

> You can even distribute an IPA file and install it via iTunes and not the App Store, but it needs to be signed by a trusted authority (your company; your dev cert; or most likely Apple, as long as it is a non-revoked cert).

Doesn't this specifically require an Enterprise Developer account?

This is a poor analogy because the customer can turn a Godfather tape into a DVD at home. Or a DVD into a mp4. Or a mp4 into whatever the future holds and be able to watch it on newer equipment. If there's DRM its typically trivially broken or worked around via hdmi converters or even a basic analog output.

As a customer of a 32-bit app, I have no such power. I can't convert it to 64-bit. That's the problem.

If you have a 32-bit app that you are not willing to strap into 64-bit, then the medium in which it can be used on with stay in the past. So if I don't update my iPhone, I can continue to use your app and will have to begin finding ways to preserve your app for myself and people like me who enjoy it.

I don't believe that you can be said to cherish something if you don't care if it goes and you don't feel the need to preserve it.

cherish (verb):

1. to love, protect, and care for someone or something that is important to you:

Although I cherish my children, I do allow them their independence.

Her most cherished possession is a 1926 letter from F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Freedom of speech is a cherished (= carefully protected) right in this country.

2. to keep hopes, memories, or ideas in your mind because they are important to you and bring you pleasure:

I cherish the memories of the time we spent together.

Why not? I have fond memories of it. I have the memories of sleeping in my car for weeks on end when I was building the software. I have memories of the two friends I built it with. I have fond memories of the bucket-based OpenGL render engine I wrote for it, the dynamic water system, the physically-driven character rig, the 3D models I made, memories of the art I painted.

I also remember the blog posts I wrote about some of the complexities and fun problems we solved. I remember the reviews written about the product.

I cherish it. I just don't care if I have the source code or a working binary (though I still have the latter until this 32 bit support is dropped!). I have the memories and experience and the desire to create more.

Your quote says it all:

> I cherish the memories of the time we spent together.

I cherish the time I spent creating my software and putting it out into the world. Now I'm creating something else, and I'm happy with the memories.

So you cherish the memories, not the thing

I don't know if there is really a difference there.

It is absolutely possible to care, and love, and cherish something -- while also be willing to let it go, so you can move on to something else. And it's software, not a human child or something. These are absolutely not in conflict, at all. Why does this even need to be said? Are half the people here robots? Apparently they are, because the moment someone talks about throwing away some software, people begin making allusions to child rearing.

Bringing out dictionaries is just a way of being an annoying pendant; nitpicking phrasing like "... and care for" in a Merriam Webster definition does not make you sound like someone enlightened "loving" or in tune. It makes you sound like that insufferable jackass, that guy everyone avoids, because they have to remind everyone "but what about the pedantry" anytime any complaint exists in the public sphere.

I'm not trying to sound anything at all. I'm trying to understand his point of view. I broke out the dictionary to help establish whether he was using the word as I understood it, not as an attempt at irritating pedantry.

The discussion is about whether it matters that these 32-bit apps (and more generally, all software eventually) will be lost to us. In that context, whether you cherish the thing or the memory of the thing is a crucial distinction.

As for being loving or "in tune", jumping on strangers who are trying to understand somebody's point of view is neither. It is precisely the behaviour of a jackass.

Some people are genuinely upset when they lose the use of cherished thing, be it a pen, a car, or the iOS games or other apps which they enjoyed using, and ignoring that or dismissing that out of hand betrays a lack of empathy.

>Does it really matter if we leave some behind?

Who decides? Popularity and economic benefit? So we get to keep Call of Duty video games, but apps that benefit a niche industry or are simply not very popular but considered important should be left behind? In other words, my Mona Lisa isn't your Mona Lisa.

Not too long ago, maybe the mid/late 1990's, we had this battle with deteriorating celluloid from the earlier stages of Hollywood. The studios were happy to let many old movies that were never transferred to VHS or DVD just wither away because the cost of transfer would never be recouped. I remember a lot of petitions and outrage and the studios reversed their policy (perhaps with grants or other funding, I don't recall). It was a small controversy and most of those movies weren't critically acclaimed, but some were and they were all part of history.

Not sure how well this analogy transfers to software but it always makes sense from a practical and moral perspective to save everything than to curate a few, especially in the age of automation and cheap computing.

We're not just talking about art here, and we're not talking about geological timescales either. I think it's perfectly reasonable to think that if I compile a program for an operating system, it will still run okay in twenty years on the latest version of that operating system. The Linux ecosystem (and Microsoft in a lot of ways is the best at this) manages this pretty well, and I think they're getting better at it. That's why people can safely build things like nuclear control systems on Linux or Windows, and not have to worry about recompiling every single binary every 3 years.

(Now mind you, they should be recompiling every binary monthly, but OS vendors shouldn't be breaking everyone's builds unless security demands it.)

It's a capricious decision that eliminates a bunch of actual useful applications with no consideration.

Meanwhile, there are 10,000 fart apps.

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