I am out of the loop but it seems like a topic to once again promote my age old belief that:
The moment purchased or licensed software is no longer serviced or supported it must become open-source.
No exception. I am still waiting on the firmware to reprogram my smartish oven.
I’d go even further: developers ought to be required to submit reproducible builds to the Library of Congress in order to be eligible for copyright in the first place.
(And copyright ought to be shortened back to its original term length, by the way.)
Sadly, even if I’m moralistically in favor, there is so much insane computer science logic (and proprietary mechanisms) behind the process of compilation, especially on certain embedded systems where this issue comes up, that I doubt that could ever be pushed into law.
This doesn’t make sense as the compilers would also be included in this new copyright scheme and would become public property after so much time.
There are open source compilers for all major CPU architectures. In fact the open source compilers regularly outperform the closed source ones. It’s also not exactly that difficult to add on more architectures to an existing compiler these days thanks to the modular way modern compilers are built. Once you build a backend for LLVM you unlock not just one language but about a dozen.
You would maybe not be surprised to know that there is way waaaaay more in common from one software project to another. Especially games which essentially all use one of a handful of game engines and asset sources.
I think proper codifying engineering standards for software would also help… maybe even should happen first.
I understand it’s easy for a layperson to have that opinion, but I don’t think it can be hand-waved away as too difficult when people are actually doing it.
