Opensource your abandonware (2010)
pulkomandy.tk
pulkomandy.tk
Moreover, comments. From expletives to actual trade secrets, a company needs to audit the code to ensure that at least the trade secrets have been removed from the source code. For example, even though Microsoft does not release the Windows/NT code widely, there are checks to ensure that expletives and comments that might cause severe repercussions (i.e. political statements) are not inserted. However, this is definitely a lesser concern to individual or small-group developers.
(Plus tooling issues etc, but considering that the massively-popular and ported Doom exists, it might be solved by the community. However, software which no longer has a community will encounter these issues.)
Just release everything else. Someone can write their own library for that or maybe even find a replacement in the open-source world.
If the application is interesting, people will find find a way to run it on modern hardware. It's not an excuse not to open-source what you can of your code.
This line of excuses is just weak. Either release the code or keep it proprietary, that's your decision as owner. Just spare us the silly excuses and trying to make it seem like your company would really really like to open-source if only it wasn't for that tiny detail of blah...
This also becomes fun if you worked with external contractors, who committed all over the code and the agreement doesn't cover releasing the code.
And then there are still all the other things in open sourcing (making sure comments are appropriate, naming is appropriate, ...)
And then you have IP besides the source, in artwork where designers often have some rights, copyrights, trademarks ...
And after all that the "fear" on your reputation, if one fears the code might seem of low quality, which might reflect bad. (Whether it's truly bad doesn't really matter, a few blog posts or youtube videos of somebody taking worst parts can harm reputation)
It's all simpler, if you plan on doing that eventually from the start, but notable effort for any serious project after the fact.
Your other examples mostly seem to boil down to "we were not willing to commit the necessary resources to do it". Which is fine, of course.
Yes, of course. If I invest resources from the beginning for "I want to relicense and open all the code" then there is no problem. However for most companies the priority is "get this out before our competitor releases their product" and many things fall under and often neither developers nor managers have the legal knowledge (and don't care)
And btw. I fully support this on a different level: For instance for devices like (home) routers I support a scheme where a company is required to publish the software once they cancel support, so one doesn't have to throw away fine working devices only since the vendor stops fixing security issues. But that won't happen quickly, as it goes through the supply chain: You need the device drivers for the chipsets etc.
I did eventually open source some code from a popular shareware utility years ago after people asked me to. (No one ever did anything with it of course.) It took me a while because I did use some third party code but eventually decided the company that wrote the code was long gone and no one would care. But a business with lawyers would not have allowed that. And even documenting what would be needed to replace the routines would have taken a fair bit of work.
The reason to open sourcing abandonware is not because you know for sure someone needs/wants it, it's to enable someone who does need/wants it, can still have it.
Instead of assuming you know what people want, open sourcing abandonware would enable people to make that decision for themselves, not you making it for them.
There are examples of niche things being resurrected by players. Niche MMOs have from scratch servers, niche consoles have complete emulators, etc. Saying "no one is going to go to the effort" is not accurate.
Contracts can legally bind the developer/s with this, more so if it is a corporate entity. Even if Google wins this case and the APIs cannot legally acquire copyright protection, the third-party can sue the developer/s for disclosing trade secrets. The code legally is clean (IP-wise) at this point, but the developer/s have broken a contract with the third-party provider in doing so, and they can sue those developer/s (however, any users of the released code are protected since they are not the signatories/parties to the contract).
Of course, every physics engine behaves a little differently from the others, so, if you game is physics centered (pinball, racing), switching implementation might result in a slightly different game - but having the core of your game depends on the implementation details of some 3rd-party library might not be a good idea anyway.
In general, the more you sprinkle your code with dependencies to 3rd party libraries, the less control you have over the resulting product.
Your point still stands, though, for some very low-level "utility" libraries like boost or the STL, or any standard library replacement , and more generally, libraries holding "vocabulary" types.
First, replacing the library requires extremely high/rare expertise and several man-years of development to implement a basic version. These never get replaced in open source because the level of individual investment is extraordinary; these libraries only get built when a company invests a few million dollars hiring one of the handful of people that know how to write one over years, which is rare and at which point they want to own it. The barrier to open source MVP is simply too high. Even worse, in some cases the licensed version becomes unavailable/unsupported because the person that designed it moves on but at least there is an incentive to spend a lot of money to remedy that.
Second, replacing the library requires computer science that has no description in literature. I've seen teams of CS PhDs spend years trying to clean room equivalent libraries with little success when there are few hints in existing computer science literature how the original library capability was even achieved. They might be able to buy a license to the original library but many times that is cost prohibitive (millions of dollars) or not available at all (licensing restrictions).
Not every application has a library dependency with these properties but it isn't that rare either. These libraries are used for good reason and sometimes provide central functionality without which the rest of the source code is relatively low value.
> the library requires computer science that has no description in literature
Can you mention examples of such cases?
https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM
The DOOM source code was released without sound support due to this:
> The bad news: this code only compiles and runs on linux. We couldn't release the dos code because of a copyrighted sound library we used (wow, was that a mistake -- I write my own sound code now), and I honestly don't even know what happened to the port that microsoft did to windows.
This isn't always a true dichotomy. Any code is better than none, you don't have to release all of it to make a difference (especially if the closed-source library is provided as a shared object). The code could be provided in a non-functionning state, it would already be a lot more helpful than binary patching while relying on disassemblers. A closed-source library can be worked around (stripping functionality), replaced, re-implemented, linked against a blob, reverse-engineered, etc.
The biggest barrier to releasing our applications as open source are organizational. It would take a number of approvals to do so and our developers would have to review the code first. We have a small development team with a large backlog of work; it’s hard to argue that they should spend time to do this instead of a higher priority task.
Related: In the past, after Microsoft was forced to release Hyper-V linux driver source code under GPL, someone noticed 'naughty phrase' in magic number that Hyper-V used, which is '0xB16B00B5' or 'BIG BOOBS', Microsoft apologized afterwards [0]
[0]: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/microsoft-code-co...
Now on the hardware side[0] there's a mismatch in incentives: an otherwise functioning piece of hardware is unable to perform certain tasks (some that even were advertised at the time of purchase) due to changes in the software or it not being compatible to updates elsewhere in the ecosystem[3], all of which could easily be fixed with software updates. The companies selling these obviously say to buy the newest version, but that feels like a waste of resources and money to me. As much as I try voting with my wallet, I think this is getting worse with more "smart" devices, where there is little choice.
[0]: I noticed this post is right below a post on a GPS issue concerning a Garmin smartwatch I own [1], that might get this update because a famous blogger posted about it, but not other fixes, like podcasts since Catalina [2] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25620372 [2]: https://forums.garmin.com/apps-software/mac-windows-software... [3]: I have an iPad 3 lying around, which is mostly useless to my workflow because it doesn't sync the Safari bookmarks, can't install an alternative browser and doesn't include most icloud features. Another example are routers and other consumer networking equipment, that frequently end up not getting updates soon after release.
No harm, perhaps, but likely considerable expense (in time and labor, which are not free).
Still, doing so is a public good, and I support the idea when feasible.
Here is the Angular+Electron version with the Visio logo: https://imgur.com/a/UDkitDm
The newer version is written in React+Electron using the official Microsoft Fluent UI framework and has an original logo.
The core drawing framework/lib is a TypeScript version of draw.io/mxgraph.
I didn't work on it since the W2020/2021 YCombinator rejection tho.
One is a, perhaps misguided, internal fear of being judged. Another one is that prospective employers sometimes look at one's github history.
As the recipient of a fair bit of that stuff, over the years, it has hardened my resolve to:
A) Do a top-notch job on all my code; regardless of whether or not anyone else will ever see it it; and
2) Not pass public negative judgement, in a specific way, on others' code (unless, of course, I am planning to use it).
Positive judgement is all good. I will sometimes make generalized "kids, these days" or "get off my lawn" statements. I may have specific targets, but I keep things vague.
As a manager for 25 years, I learned that carrots tend to yield better long-term results than sticks.
If a young programmer releases something that they think will "change the world," but is, in fact, just another wheel, I see geeks pile on them mercilessly.
I feel that it is better to praise the good work, and gently point them towards the previous wheels.
But I'm a fairly abnormal geek.
I've also open-sourced almost all my work for the last couple of decades.
> Do a top-notch job on all my code
If you're like most above-average programmers, you constantly evolve. Your code from N years ago should look worse than the code you write today, otherwise you're not really improving are you?
So you completely missed the initial point made by FartyMcFarter, that old code looks worse than what you write today and people might judge you for it.
>> Geeks love to cut up other geeks.
I'll just leave that out there, then...
May be another 5 years.
https://github.com/open-source-flash/open-source-flash/issue...
I’m a bit of a tin foil hat kind of a guy and for my own personal websites I prefer serving them with HTTPS and HSTS, but it’s more of a best practices thing and it’s not really a matter of life or death for my (very few) visitors.
You abandoned it for a reason and only people who'll benefit from it are other people. That would be fine if it was not at your expense. Someone may look at the source code and contact your support or even take you to court because one of your programmers ignored license of a third party library. You could get it audited and re-write parts of it... even so, there is a non-zero risk that someone will come after you.
If you're OK with that, do what you want. Otherwise, by default, don't opensource your abandonware.