[aeturnum]

> This program embodies the concept of finished software — a software you can use forever with no unneeded changes.

I think it's important for people to realize this is totally untrue. You can check the wikipedia for wordstar[1] and the first paragraph says, "...originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system, with later editions added for MS-DOS and other 16-bit PC OSes."

Software needs to have the ability to change because the devices we run it on keep changing - either because we make new ones or the old ones wear out. This is why open source is so critical - because there is no such thing as "software you can use forever," there's only "software you can use right now and modify to continue to use in the future."

That said I also appreciate software whose feature set is frozen - allowing it to quickly and easily be made available on many platforms and be immediately usable by anyone who encountered it before.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar

[jroseattle]

100%.

Need to differentiate between finished FEATURES and finished software.

[avhon1]

Emulation and compatibility layers seems to cover this just fine.

[aeturnum]

Yes - one way to deal with the fact that "software you can use forever" doesn't exist is to write more software whose source code you can update and just update that. However, that really just confirms what I am saying.