[time-nuts] Tymserve 2100 thinks it's 1995?

[Bob Camp]

Hi

The point is that the company likely has newer products that are based on the same
code concepts. Not all software ideas are covered by copyright or a patent. Once you
give away copies of the code, the world can base products off that code. You now
have a competitor who has a *much* lower cost basis that you do. 

The next layer to the onion is selling the company. Many of these companies sell 
primarily for their IP and not for any other of their assets. You can watch them get 
sold, the IP stripped out, and then re-sold for a lot less money. 

Yes it’s a crazy world….

Bob

> On May 5, 2015, at 11:46 AM, Alan Ambrose <alan.ambrose at anagram.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>>>> 
> 
> You can claim that software costs nothing once you write the first copy. In the next breath we all expect
> 
> to get ongoing customer support for that software and (errrr ) patches for this and that. When a vendor
> 
> charges us by the year for that support we are unhappy.
> 
> 
> 
> Would I love to see all these 10 to 20 year old boxes running perfectly 20 years from now - sure.
> 
> It's a noble goal. I have a *lot* of boxes. With all the GPS issues in the past, and likely in the future - not likely to happen.
> <<<
> 
> Of course, once the suppliers have decided they can't make any further money from it, it would be a nice goodwill gesture to make the software open source so that others can fix it if they want.
> 
> Alan
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