Comment by snvzz
1 day ago
>Clearly the Windows NT kernel is older than 25 years, and is still making money.
Not the one from 25 years ago.
>Seems like a million years ago I wrote some games. The source code is long gone. (Well it's on 5.25 floppy disks in my garage for 30 years, so functionally gone.)
Legal requirement would have ensured great care in preservation of said source.
>I'm sorry to say, but making laws for old software is basically pointless.
If it's pointless, then copyright should expire much earlier.
>> Not the one from 25 years ago.
um yes, that one. updated, yes. added to, yes. But a huge chunk of the code that shipped then is still shipping now.
>> Legal requirement would have ensured great care in preservation of said source.
Um, no. The cost of that "great care" would simply have to be built into the initial release. More likely we'd just ignore the problem (who expects this thing to last 25 years anyway?) and then in 25 years, assuming we're still around, we'll wait for someone to what? Take us to court? "Sorry judge, source has gone in the great fire of 07"). Judge does what? issues us a fine? (Said fine being anyway lower than the cost of the "great care" you mentioned....)
Copyright serves a very different purpose. It protects the binary from being copied by others for commercial gain. That's not a law for "old software" - (nobody cares about Visicalc), it's a law for current software (ie, it's still illegal to pirate Windows 2000).