>Free Software doesn't mean it comes without costs, just the costs are >different than a license fee (and a support fee, and an upgrade fee, >and...). If nobody is willing to invest any effort in the stuff they >use, they shouldn't be surprised when it disappears.
Playing devil's advocate again, if I subscribed to and read every mailing list of every point of functionality that I use in Free Software, or even in the distribution that I use, there would be no time for eating and sleeping. When I was at DEC and we were "retiring" functionality there was a whole procedure around it, which included writing to all of the current people on support contract for that functionality to let them know that we were dropping it. I still remember the day they decided to officially drop support for DECtape: o every hardware support contract received a letter o every software support contract received a letter There was a whole check-off list, and a product manager whose job it was to make sure the list items were done. I think that some of the Linux distros do a fairly good job of telling what is being dropped in a particular release...maybe it could be made a little more visible in an "uber list". md _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
