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

[Jon 'maddog' Hall]

>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.

Playing devil's advocate again, if I subscribed to and read every
mailing list of every point of functionality that I use in Free
Software, or even in the distribution that I use, there would be no time
for eating and sleeping.

When I was at DEC and we were "retiring" functionality there was a whole
procedure around it, which included writing to all of the current people
on support contract for that functionality to let them know that we were
dropping it.

I still remember the day they decided to officially drop support for
DECtape:

o every hardware support contract received a letter
o every software support contract received a letter

There was a whole check-off list, and a product manager whose job it was
to make sure the list items were done.

I think that some of the Linux distros do a fairly good job of telling
what is being dropped in a particular release...maybe it could be made a
little more visible in an "uber list".

md