🚀 go-pugleaf

You make a couple of points with which I cannot agree:

> With books and similar documents, it has always seemed to
> me that copyright holders should have some reponsibility
> to make the material available while it's "out of print",
> in return for society's protection of the ownership rights.

and for software:

> I have a proviso in all this though -- if a new version of
> software "breaks" older versions in the sense that you can
> no longer access documents created with the older versions,
> then I think the software publishers have an obligation to
> either continue sales and support of the old model or provide
> some *satisfactory* means to convert documents from the old
> to the new format.  To their credit, I think they mostly do
> this with modern version changes.


I do not agree that any author has any obligation - moral or secular - to
make his creative works available in perpetuity. First, seems to me an
author should have full control of materials bearing his name, and if
improvements or corrections appear in the 'second edition'  it's more than
reasonable that the author be allowed to associate himself with the
new-and-improved version, or if the 'first edition' was that bad and there
is no second edition, the author need not be saddled with that literary
millstone forever.

Similarly, I don't feel that as a software author I need to make everything
'backwards compatible.' If you don't want the new features, or I do not
offer a 'conversion' tool, then don't buy my upgrade. I'll pay for my error
in the pocketbook with reduced sales.

If I offer an upgrade and fail to tell you in advance that documents are not
compatible and there's no conversion option, then I may be foolish pond
scum, but I'm not wrong. You can always revert to your backup (oh, you
didn't? Too bad).

--
Michael C. Mattias
Tal Systems
Racine WI
michael.mattias@gte.net