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Kind of crazy to think in the thousands of man hours involved in old software products. These products generated millions (billions?) of dollars and impacted the life of so many people, only to be available for free now, only just a few decades ... isn't this kind of thing unique of the software craft?

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Public libraries have been a thing since the 1800's, which are equally amazing in terms of bringing tremendous impact to millions of people who wouldn't have otherwise had that benefit.

The key different of course is that mid-80's DOS software is more-or-less obsolete and abandoned for a reason (the computer history community notwithstanding, of which I'm a part), whereas public libraries are filled with books that still retain almost as much value as they day they were written.

> only to be available for free now

Not legally. I doubt very much the copyright holders of all of these games have allowed their use in this manner.

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