Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dleslie 1961 days ago
It generally takes less effort to emulate ancient software than to bring ancient FOSS back to life. Sure, the emulator is FOSS, but that's fitting in the 80/20 rule just fine. There's plenty of broken, abandoned and dead FOSS emulators, too.
1 comments
fartcannon 1961 days ago
But if you wanted to, you could bring them back to life. That's the value.

With the emulator, first you need to write that emulator, and then you only get precisely that version of the software. After that, you're toast.

link
dleslie 1961 days ago
Sure, but I'd have a tough time finding proprietary software that I'd want to use that isn't adequately emulated. As for updating, well, I'm not going to be updating most FOSS, either.

Right now I can double-click an icon on my desktop that launches SimCity for Windows 3.1 inside of dosbox, and it works great. It didn't take much effort to get working, either.

I can't say the same for most dead FOSS that I've tried to resurrect. Usually I'll have to manage the outdated dependencies somehow, perhaps by writing a SHIM or somesuch; and probably significantly fiddle with the build system because Linux systems have changed significantly since the mid-90s.

It's a difference of hours versus days of effort. I've done both, but guess which I simply _haven't the time for_ now? I've got family and friends that need my attention moreso than a dead piece of FOSS no one but myself seems to care about.

link
fartcannon 1961 days ago
Sure, you're obviously a popular person and your friends/family are always more important than updating software.

But if you wanted to, you _can_ update dead Foss. Can't update that copy of Simcity, can you. Nopers.

link
dleslie 1961 days ago
Not quite, there are ways. The Diablo mod community is an excellent example: before the debug symbols were found on the psx release, the common method was to inject instructions directly into the binary. Similarly, Fallout and the Infinity engine games have mods that patch binaries and replace DLLs.
link
fartcannon 1961 days ago
Yes, that's right, certainly easier than having the source. Your friends and family must appreciate the time you saved them by injecting DLLS. You'd better hope you efforts don't get DMCA'd.

Summarizing, closed source projects die. At best you can run them in an elaborate museum (emulator) and at worse, you can attempt to Frankenstein's monster them by injecting DLLs.

Open source will outlive us all.

How many places does Doom run?

link
dleslie 1961 days ago
Bin patching won't get you DMCA'd, and it's really not so different than writing a shim nowadays. Tooling has come a long way.

Doom is a closed source game that was finished, polished, and then open sourced. Strange to use that as a FOSS example.

The FOSS-from-the-start examples would be Tux Racer, 0ad, and so on.

link