In reply to <a href="https://pointieststick.com/2025/04/06/tools-that-just-work-until-they-dont/comment-page-1/#comment-40254">0penmindead</a>. <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>I think the big issue here is independence. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>If you have an archive of an old Debian version (the everything CD images that include the whole repos), you can go and install it today and use it forever. Yes, the machine won't be secure online, but it will work. You can put it on a laptop that never connects to the network and it will be perfectly usable. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>If you grab a windows 11 ISO and try to use it in 10 years it won't even install, because the installer needs an internet connection. Same for most software today - there's online license activation, always online functionality, automatic driver detection etc. If I got a copy of Solidworks or anything Adobe suite today, it will be as a subscription and it will just stop working in a year.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>From the 3d printer land, one of my acquaintances was getting one for kids and ended up with a XYZDaVinci machine. Those have all nicely integrated features, proprietary everything, rfid in filament spools for material auto detection. Well now the company is out of business, the slicer is hard to setup since it was compiled for very old Windows versions, and the rfid spools, which are the only thing the machine will accept, can't be purchased anywhere. If the software was open, you could compile a firmware that skips the rfid detection (or more likely some hacker online would and you would just download it feom their forum post) and keep printing. Or, you know, it would not have that "feature" in the first place. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph -->...