Comment by ryandrake
1 month ago
6 years is really not a long time at all. You can probably find heaps of open source software out there that compiles and runs perfectly on 20 year old PCs. It's not like the maintainer has to do much to retain support--they just have to not make the software dependent on new operating systems.
Bits don't rot.
Bits certainly don’t rot and you’re welcome to stay on the latest stable version that runs on your architecture.
And if you want new bits with the new features, those aren’t the same bits and that work isn’t free.
Exactly. That's all I'm asking for. If version X works on my system today and version Y needs an OS bump, well... that sucks and is avoidable, but whatever. I expect to be able to obtain and use version X tomorrow and into the future. That's it. I'm not asking to make version Y work for me, but it would be nice if they didn't add the OS dependency.
But increasingly, developers can't even manage to keep version X around and working, despite them having to simply not do anything to it to keep it from breaking.
How many of those 20 year old projects had to go through an architecture change that the manufacturer no longs supports? Come on man be reasonable.
Ask MacPorts, which goes all the way back to Leopard-era PowerPC!
Homebrew doesn't have to lift a finger to support Intel Macs. It already does! All they have to do is not kill support for them.
Hey, it's their software, they are all volunteers and can do whatever they want. I'm grateful for the short window of time in which I was able to use their software. I don't get to decide their support period, but I will still hopelessly complain about it. "Deliberately breaking compatibility with a computer because it is old" is my biggest axe to grind with the whole software industry, and I'll shake my fists at this cloud until I die.
Software maintenance is not free, especially for a project the size of Homebrew, and it's perfectly reasonable for software to not be supported on older computers due to maintenance burden, with a good example being 32 bit processors. If you had a 32 bit processor would you expect all of your software that was supported now to be supported forever, just because it supports it now?
3 replies →