DECnet and other dead technologies (was: Linux for "cloud computing")

[Benjamin Scott]

On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 9:02 PM, Jon 'maddog' Hall <maddog at li.org> wrote:
> But in walking back to my house from breakfast today, it occurred to me
> that the average "user" of DECnet Linux probably does not read the
> DECnet Linux mailing lists.

  You think neither of them are subscribed?  ;-)

  Seriously, that occurred to me, too.  But as commonly has been
observed, Free Software doesn't mean it comes without costs, just the
costs are different than a license fee (and a support fee, and an
upgrade fee, and...).  If nobody is willing to invest any effort in
the stuff they use, they shouldn't be surprised when it disappears.

> Someday the code will be ripped from the kernel and it will stop
> working....then (as the poster said), people may just user older
> kernels.

  Yup.  Probably on a machine kept around for that sole purpose.
Possibly running in a VM.  I expect this to become the norm.

  Vernor Vinge (of "technological singularity" fame), in his fiction
novel /A Deepness In The Sky/, posited the job role of "software
archaeologist".  Given enough time (say, 100s or 1000s of years),
we're going to get to the point where any given problem will already
have been solved by past software.  The job will be finding it and
making it work.  I've already heard of people running an emulator on
top of an emulator inside of a VM solely to keep some old application
alive.

  And I know there are people who believe we're already there.  :-)

-- Ben